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We’re Vanja Terzić and Eli Mishal. Dealers first, now 13 years running Goxee. This podcast is the unfiltered reality of building software that actually fixes dealership problems.
We break down what we’ve rolled out, why we built it the way we did, and how it played out when dealers used it in their stores. You’ll hear about the good, the bad, and the adjustments we had to make along the way.
We talk about things that hit your desk every day: pricing cars to the market, aging and turn, recon delays, CRM and lead quality, market comps, photo AI, and the processes that cut time-to-line and improve gross. No vendor spin. No sponsorships. No ads. Just two guys who’ve lived the grind, sharing what’s working and what isn’t.
If you’re a dealer principal, GM, GSM, used car manager, BDC lead, or anyone building tools for this industry - this is for you.
Vanja Terzic (00:00)
What's up, man?
Eli Mishal (00:02)
I'm just very overwhelmed with so many ideas, so many things that can be achieved in such an era. We're living in such a great era, but it really comes down to how we're going to implement this whole thing. I think that's what it comes down to the most.
Vanja Terzic (00:22)
Implement what?
Eli Mishal (00:23)
Well, AI obviously and getting closer to that moment where AI still influence the communication but not necessarily being visible to the consumer because I think the consumer doesn't like that all AI thing in general.
Vanja Terzic (00:48)
So I mean, is it a question of like.
We talked the other day and I was like, I think in a year or two, when somebody gets a cold call, that's a real person, they're going to be happy. They're going to be excited to talk to a real person. That's how crazy AI is going to get. So I mean, if we look at it as a part of a sale and car sales are very, very retail. Yeah. Where is it going to go? And what do you think? I guess the question is this. talked last time we spoke, we talked about
chatbots and things like that. But there's a hell of a lot more to it.
Eli Mishal (01:26)
Definitely, definitely. think there are a lot of things that we, as we mentioned the previous discussion that we haven't really discovered yet, but we're in the journey to discover those things as we moving forward with, you know, whatever data we're gathering and analyzing and understanding, you know, and because this all AI thing in a way, it's very new to the world, you know, and not just to the automotive industry, but to every single one of us, you know, so that
that changes as we're speaking, you
Vanja Terzic (02:00)
So I mean, there's two, there's, geez, guess there's three different applications if we break them down. One is for the dealer. And when I say dealer.
So you have dealer and then you have user and then you have consumer, which is shopper. And those are three completely different things. You know, the dealer might get a great piece of software, but if the user, which it might be the sales rep in this case, doesn't use it, the consumer doesn't benefit. So we have to look at it from three different tiers now.
Eli Mishal (02:19)
Mm-hmm.
Wolf.
Well, I think there's a kind of like, there's something in here that is happening as we speak in not just the development, but the challenges as we're facing them, right? And I think the biggest challenge is to again, avoid the appearance of the AI, but still be able to use the AI and leverage the power of the AI in order to
Influence the sales, know the communication and whatever comes with that So that's like the challenge in my opinion because I think that as we moving forward consumer will be more Afraid of the AI because obviously we all know that right of the bat if the BOT knows it all There is an advantage which I don't want to be influenced by as a consumer, right? and a dealer
is facing such a challenge because, know, in today, we're in 2025, getting into August, right, of this year. And I think that a lot of dealers are start leveraging AI. And the more AI being leveraged by dealers, the higher the fatigue of consumers has just been increasing and increasing. It's like you can take a great example as, you know, ads back in the day.
Versus today, as we scroll into Instagram, we're looking into the feed or whatever, we're with stories and reels and so on and so on. The ads, when they come up, we are triggered to look at that as an ad, something they're trying to sell us. Those ads are becoming very personalized. They're very much appealing. They're very much all of those beautiful stuff that they're trying to create.
Vanja Terzic (04:15)
Okay.
Eli Mishal (04:28)
But that's an issue too, because we start creating that kind of mechanism in each one of us that tell us, you know what, wait a second, they're trying to sell me something. They're trying to, they know things about me. They know what I'm triggered by and therefore they're using it to leverage the power of the sale, right, on me. And that's something that I think a lot of people will eventually
be afraid of even more, especially when it comes to again, second most important thing that a decision that we make in our life, which is buying a vehicle, right? So I think that's the biggest issue of all. That's the biggest challenge again, The challenge of being able to implement immersively the AI without feeling the AI is actually there.
That's a big challenge, I think, to every software company, not just us.
Vanja Terzic (05:28)
Yeah, but it also looks like a lot of software companies or at least what we've seen lately they're they're trying to They don't know when to stop the AI either. There's not enough AI or there's too much AI. They don't know when to pause it so like for example AI should not replace it should empower. it should empower Like if I was if I was back on the lot today
You know, if I run through like one day of working at a dealership, you're going to have a very small amount of time in that day that's going to bring in the most amount of results that you're going to have. And I still want to do those things. I still want to perform those tasks because I kind of like doing those things, right? Whether it's closing a deal, whether it's really connecting with somebody. And if I had a perfect AI, I'm just kind of going back into operations.
Eli Mishal (06:09)
Yes.
Vanja Terzic (06:23)
I would say Let me do what I'm good at doing and have the AI be like the best assistant you could ever have. Right. So it's going to but not just on on the sales side. Also, again, if I'm a user in this picture, I want it on the sales side. If if I'm a dealer in this equation, I kind of want the AI to run other things and to give me information like, hey, this car is aging. You've got offers. Let's drop the price. Let's do this. Let's do this. Let's do this.
Also, if I'm the dealer, because I've been on both ends, sometimes just because we have the software, if the users, the reps don't use it, it's worthless.
Eli Mishal (07:02)
Yeah, we can take the best example of all of the price drop automation that we created back in the day where the first one probably to implement that, know, not probably, but for sure we are. And many other companies have followed us, you know, to create the same thing. But yeah, we found right off the bat that most dealers didn't really use the feature, meaning, in other words, taking that price and drop it, right? So it really comes down to how accessible that is.
how easy those decisions are when it matters the most. if that makes sense.
Vanja Terzic (07:34)
Yeah,
yeah, like I had a conversation with Tony and Tony's a friend of ours. He's a big wholesaler here in Southern California. So, you he talks a lot of he spends his days at franchise dealers and conversation we had last week was, you know, these guys got this great software for videos. We've been talking about personalized videos of cars, not just photos, not just 360, not just a turnaround video, but an actual video of the vehicle, like a walkthrough.
Right? So there's some software that a dealer signed up for, but the sales reps don't use it. Like 10 % of sales reps use it. And the ones that do use it do very well with it. But it's a struggle to do this. Think about it. Like right now, it's probably a hundred degrees out, 115 degrees out. You who's going to go out there and record a video, you know, different video, five times a day for different leads. Not many people are going to do that. But it still needs to get done. Right?
Eli Mishal (08:19)
Yeah, it's impossible.
Yeah. No, absolutely. mean, there's just no possibility. mean, it's just...
Obscure
player.
Vanja Terzic (08:31)
Because
there's value in that. from like, from a user level, a sales rep level, there's things that we need to do. Okay. That if AI can help automate those things, they're of value because they still need to get done. But if it's going to, you know, if it's going to take over those major tasks that we have that make us us, that make us authentic, that make people trust us, that build a relationship, that might be an issue.
Eli Mishal (08:57)
Yeah, yeah, I can see that. Definitely. Yeah, I think it's a mixture of different things. As I said earlier, think the challenges are not going to decrease. They will increase with the use of AI. Because again, challenges like for example, if you look at today, a lot of ⁓
Vanja Terzic (09:14)
What do mean by challenges?
Eli Mishal (09:22)
companies offering those like auto scheduling for an appointment and stuff like that, right? But there's still human element even in there. As we developed the auto scheduler ourselves on the automation side, we found that, know, obviously we cannot just like say, okay, yeah, book it, done, you know, like you got the appointment done and just literally have the consumer talking directly to the AI and just get it, you know, confirmed and all this thing.
Vanja Terzic (09:27)
Mm-hmm.
Eli Mishal (09:51)
So we had to kind of go around and figure, okay, what will be the best way for the dealer to confirm an appointment that is requested at the moment, you And now it's being done. So we need to be able to involve the dealer in those scenarios. And let's say what happens when, let's say you approve the appointment, you know? And what happened when we get closer to the appointment? And so there's a lot of...
Vanja Terzic (10:11)
Mm-hmm.
Eli Mishal (10:17)
things that needs to happen. So like reminder, you know, for you, for the dealer and for the consumer, as well as a mechanism where the dealer knows, okay, a request or an appointment came in and things like that, you know, which, which needs to flow. needs to create an easier flow because in today's world, what's happening is that let's say you're a consumer, trying to, uh, appoint to create an appointment, right? So
you're going to call the dealership, you're going to say, this available? And then someone will answer the phone and say, yes, it is available. Would you like to come in to look at that? And then that person will end up coming to the lot at the point where it suits for both parties. But what actually happening in ⁓ communication as such as AI, where let's say after hours, what's happening in that case? will answer? Who will confirm this appointment?
Vanja Terzic (10:55)
Yeah.
Eli Mishal (11:12)
And that's creating an issue, that creating a challenge in a way, because you still need to merge that into the flow. You still need to make sure that the appointment is being confirmed by a human. So there is still a lot of things that needs to happen in order to make the AI work. in a way. So yeah, there are a lot of challenges when it comes to kind of implementing AI into your workflow in a way.
Vanja Terzic (11:37)
Yeah, and it looks like a lot of these different different AIs and tools and features also they live in different ecosystems completely. Right. So you're going to have one chat bot here and one automation over here. And sometimes they don't live in the same CRM. And if they don't live in the same CRM, they definitely it's it's very hard to get that advice on on a deal level in real time. So last week, last night, last week, yeah.
Eli Mishal (11:46)
Yes.
Absolutely.
Vanja Terzic (12:05)
Was it last week we talked about some new things that we're looking at putting out into our AI and that's, our AI is called the advantage. It's a dealer advantage AI. it's a collection of, she's lots of different tools all within one that work natively with each other in the same platform.
Eli Mishal (12:11)
Yeah. Yeah, for sure.
Yes.
Definitely.
Yeah, so the advantage as it speaks, it's actually giving the dealer an advantage in every single way, which is very much like covers the dealer in those areas where it matters the most, you know, and it lift the dealer and allow him to make better decision overall, if that makes sense. So when it comes to, let's say, dropping a price of a vehicle,
Vanja Terzic (12:31)
Mm-hmm.
Eli Mishal (12:49)
or when it comes to request a review in the right timing. And maybe just look into your dealership, data and information, and instead of trying to be going deep into the numbers, just getting an actual report from an AI that kind of lay out to you what needs to be done next, like in terms of even acquisition or maybe
For example, how your sales team's doing each one of your sales persons on the lot, how they're actually doing in general and where they need to be improving and where they need to be, what they need to be avoiding perhaps. But there's a lot of metrics that a GM, even in a French's dealership, let's take classic scenario, Like a franchise dealer,
Vanja Terzic (13:31)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Eli Mishal (13:41)
as I don't know 20 people let's say trying to sell cars trying to do everything they can they they meet in the morning they sit down they say okay let's send as many emails as we can let's try to touch base with whoever we can and all those things you know but guess what most of those 20 people go to their desks and they don't really do what they're supposed to do and that's an issue right there and so what we're intending to do is to make the follow-ups automatically so you don't have to worry about it in a way right
and all the other flows. For example, we analyze conversations over time, we're extracting the vehicle interest, we're doing all kinds of different things that allows us to gather a lot of data into one prospect, which is the lead, right? In that case. And that help us to map a direction in which we can make a sale much easier than ever before.
if that makes sense.
Vanja Terzic (14:42)
Well, so in that scenario, what prevents?
what's in place to help sales reps take back over to do that, you know, 10, 20 % of the work that they really love doing.
Eli Mishal (14:57)
I think, I don't know if it's about if they like or they don't like because I might have seen people that coming into the lot and you know what they hate their day, they hate their morning maybe they woke up on their left side and there's something going on back home you know and they're not supposed to be naturally functioning normal because it's natural to be sometimes off you know of the truck right so in that case I will say
Vanja Terzic (15:20)
Okay.
Eli Mishal (15:24)
Our job is to make sure that we're extracting the most from every single one of them, regardless of either they like to do it or they don't.
Vanja Terzic (15:30)
What I mean by like to it's like what what they're best at and what they're most valuable at, right? Because if if AI could do everything, you wouldn't, you wouldn't need to have salespeople at all.
Eli Mishal (15:36)
But what one second, but some people are not.
But some people are not. Some people are not good at sales, but they're somehow dragged into this role because all they want to do is just making some money. What about those? There many of those.
Vanja Terzic (15:49)
Well, okay, so I mean,
let's talk about the elephant in the room. What business do they have being in sales, if they don't want to be in sales, which means they're not going to want to improve at sales, because they don't want to be there.
Eli Mishal (16:00)
Well,
that's not the question. The question is like, there's a lot of people who are in sales because they want to make more money, you know, but they're not in sales because they love sales. Not everybody who is in sales love to make, I mean, to do the sale, right? It's a tough, you know, environment in a way, right? So again, our goal is not to figure out how to enhance that thing that they like to do.
Vanja Terzic (16:19)
Sure, sure, sure.
Eli Mishal (16:29)
but to empower them to do as much as they can do with the data that we're gathering, if that makes sense.
Vanja Terzic (16:37)
So that the people who are good at the things they do, they can continue doing those things.
Eli Mishal (16:43)
Absolutely. mean, the idea is in the end to make it easier for the salespeople to do what they intend to do. Not necessarily like to do, but intend to do, which means that they want to sell more cars because in the end of the day, if they make more sales, they make more money. Right. So that's what they're here for. They're here to make more money. And we're here to help them to make more money.
Vanja Terzic (17:00)
Right, right.
Yeah, yeah, make sense. I get it. I get it Okay so What are some of those? Let's talk about and let's maybe we should get into detail on that like what are some of those dealer level? features and things that Now that we're discussing on the pipeline right now
Eli Mishal (17:26)
So, currently we're finishing up our action bar, which is very much like a bar that it took us a very long time to figure out, like, what is it that needs to be like right in front of you, perhaps, right? Because, okay, so we changed a lot of things in our UI, right? Because the user interface is
super crucial within the actual structure that is laid out to a person. And when it comes to a dealership, there is all kinds of things that are literally happening. Let's talk about the auction bar to start with. I think the auction bar is kind of a centralized place where you can see everything that is actually happening right now or needs to happen.
it's a matter of like the next couple minutes or during today date. It's a kind of a timeline, you know, that describes your day in terms of events and tasks that needs to be happening. So if perhaps even if a price drop suggestion comes up, it will appear in the action bar as well. So if a task that you created, which is like, let's say, you know,
run the credit for this guy, do this, do that, you know, it will appear there as well. If an appointment request will be requested by a customer speaking into the AI, right, that will throw it into the action bar as well. The idea is to bring everything that matters right in front of you, right at the top of our UI, and which changes a lot of things in a way, right? So, yeah.
Action Bar is one of our main things to do at this moment of time because we believe that we want to enhance it. We want to make sure that everything that is important is in front of you. And at the moment, we're very much analyzing how people are actually using it in order to see if there is room for improvements. This is at least for the first version of the Action Bar, if that makes sense.
Vanja Terzic (19:32)
What about the other things we talked about some other things like price drop notifications and things like that?
Eli Mishal (19:32)
Thank
price drop suggestion, you mean? Yes.
Vanja Terzic (19:40)
Suggestions yeah from on the on the
dealer side because I'm trying to I'm trying to break this down into two categories number one is things that are going to be of benefit to users which is salespeople and then things that are going to be beneficial to To dealers which have nothing to do with salespeople right which is more on the operation side
Eli Mishal (19:45)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Absolutely.
So we are technically implementing things as we were kind of like restructuring the flow of the action bar. So the idea is to bring again what matters the most at that moment of time into the action bar. Meaning, so let's say for example on the price drop specifically if you would like this answer, I I gotta answer that question in a is
We're going to get to it. And OK, so the idea behind the price drop suggestion, let's talk about that specifically, right? So as we spoke earlier, a lot of dealers had a lot of issues. Dropping prices, even though the feature is there, OK, so practically in today automation when it comes to price drop suggestion.
All they need to do is literally go to inventory manager, drop the price and any lead that been associated to a vehicle, to a unit perhaps, will receive a text message notification saying, hey, you know what, we just dropped that price for that vehicle, blah, blah, blah. Unfortunately, as you mentioned, and we know already, you know, at this point that majority of car dealers not really doing so. And some of those vehicles at the bottom of the aging, you know, least ordered,
are being abandoned almost in a way. And some of those cars are like aging at 365 days and I've seen even 600 days and above. And I think the biggest reason for that is because people as they getting new inventory in, especially small shops, all they do is focusing on those vehicles. right? They're doing the old recon they're preparing the vehicles.
Vanja Terzic (21:20)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Eli Mishal (21:43)
They're dealing with body shops, they're dealing with mechanic shops and they're dealing with all kinds of things just to make sure that those vehicles are ready. And as they're preparing them, obviously if I have a vehicle that is so deep into my lot and it's already having so much dust on it, know, I'm literally and naturally we'll forget about it, right? You're going to forget about that unit and it's just going to be sitting and having more and more dust on it in a way, So, but no matter how you look at that,
There's money in that unit. And that's what we're intending to correct in a way. And So the issue that we have been facing in this first version of the price drop automation was not necessarily the fact that the feature didn't exist at that moment of time, but the fact that the dealer didn't take the action that it takes in order to move the vehicle or to drop the price, you know.
So the vehicle will be moving, right? So we can still get rid of that unit and move to the next one. And I think that's when That's brought us to the understanding that we need to create more of a suggestion. OK. And how suggestion works is technically looking into your entire inventory, understanding the amount of leads you got on every vehicle, understanding when those leads came in, how hot they are, know, like how relevant they are, whatever that is. Right. And
Vanja Terzic (22:39)
Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
Eli Mishal (23:05)
figuring out like based on market situation right now, like what's going on right now in the market where your car is actually standing, right? In order, again, on a price level, right? In order to market that vehicle to the price where it suits that sale, right? So, and then in that moment of time, we're creating a suggestion in which giving reasoning
not just a suggestion out of the blue, hey, you should just lower that car 500 bucks below blah, blah. No, it's more of a reasoning. There is a reason behind why you should lower the price of the vehicle in which giving you an example, I'll give you the best example. So lower that, let's say vehicle by 500, let's take that, okay? And the reason is because it's gonna position your vehicle below a certain...
Vanja Terzic (23:38)
Yep. Yep.
Eli Mishal (24:00)
vehicles within that market, you know, is going to give you the amount of vehicles and all those things, all the metrics. So you can kind of understand, okay, well, if I lower the price by 500 bucks, I still have some margin to be made, you know, and I will probably be able to sell that car in like literally no time. That makes a difference. You know, a lot of people call dealerships and that's something that I always encouraging dealers is that a lot of people, I know there's a lot of people who do negotiate prices, but there's a lot who don't.
You know, and they look at the prize as a final prize and that 500 difference can make a big difference in a way, you know, because even if perhaps you lower the car by 500 and then someone call you and say, Hey, can you lower it by another 200 bucks or can you take this another 500 bucks off or whatever that is? Right. Would you rather have the vehicle sitting or being sold, you know, and move to the next unit? You know, sometimes it's just better to get rid of a unit that sits for too long.
Vanja Terzic (24:48)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Eli Mishal (24:58)
rather than just keep letting it sit and add more dust on it.
Vanja Terzic (25:01)
I think we touched on
that. mean, as time goes on, if you're not, if I drop price tomorrow and if you look at, not to get too technical, but there's a thing called first data cookies on your website, which is basically your data. know, for those people who might be wondering, like, it's your data. You don't have to depend on another, you know, pixel from Facebook or Google Analytics code is basically your data and you can act on it. So dealers have a lot of first
pixel data if we want to look at it like that in their CRM. So if you have 10, 20, 30 leads on a vehicle and you drop the price, you're basically letting them all know at the same time in real time, correct?
Eli Mishal (25:42)
That's right. mean,
if you don't have automation in a way and we should touch the technical in a way, you
Vanja Terzic (25:45)
You can't do it, man. You can't humanly do it. What are you going to do? Send
30 text messages every time you do a price drop? You can't.
Eli Mishal (25:51)
Well, ⁓
in the old days, obviously it wasn't possible, right? So people didn't, they never done it, right? But in some cases, I must say, you know, lot of dealers, let's take that great example. A lot of dealers has been taking a vehicle that is aging and all of a sudden they receive a lead and...
Vanja Terzic (26:14)
Okay.
Eli Mishal (26:16)
they might drop the price but talk to only one single lead. So they're always depending on that one single lead to say, sure, I'm interested or whatever. But again, they're very much like, they're very much in the mercy of that one lead and that's just not enough, right? Yeah, well, yeah, of course.
Vanja Terzic (26:25)
Right, right, right.
Yeah, because they didn't build an audience. They didn't build an audience. Correct. So
but let's take that just one step further. And let's say you've got what you do. You always have multiple dealers having the same unit unless it's a crazy classic or rare piece. Right. But let's say it's a twenty twenty four Tesla Model S or Ford F-150, whatever any car twenty twenty four. You're going to have more than one car.
Eli Mishal (26:40)
Okay.
Vanja Terzic (27:00)
In the market for that vehicle and if you don't you're gonna go wider you're gonna go 100 miles 200 miles 300 whatever 500 miles so That we know so it's not the I guess the question is If i'm dealer a and your dealer b And I got 10 leads on this car and you got 10 leads on this car same year make model trim Price, I mean, it's never going to be identical. But you know what I mean
Eli Mishal (27:02)
Always.
Yeah, for sure. You're gonna extend the distance, Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Vanja Terzic (27:29)
And
outside of the relationships that excuse me that the sales reps are building because those are also very important, right? If somebody trusts you, they're more likely to buy from you and at least continue that conversation. So let's say all those things are kind of even.
Eli Mishal (27:38)
Absolutely. Yes.
Yeah. There are only
two metrics, right? I mean, let's talk about that. Let's just put it out there. There's only two metrics. There's not three, four, five, nothing. There's only two metrics that kind of define a sale. One, it's a price, okay? And the second, okay, is how much I trust you. That's very much what defines a sale. Sometimes I will be willing to pay a little bit more because I do trust you more.
Vanja Terzic (27:49)
On what?
Okay.
Well, it comes to that final tier, right? When you're like, OK, I'm comparing these cars between these two dealers because it's comparison, it's comparison. So they might buy for, you know, a thousand different reasons. But if you have dealer A and dealer B and they're both an option for the consumer to purchase from, the one who's doing better follow up, more follow up, more transparency, higher trust is going to win.
Eli Mishal (28:09)
And there's a lot of people, yeah.
It's all about comparison. Yes. Yes.
Vanja Terzic (28:36)
90 % of the time, even if the price is higher. mean, we're not talking astronomically higher. If it's a grand two or three, if you're buying with trust, it's OK to spend more money because the price is not always the main selling factor and the last selling factor. It's not. We know it. We've overpaid for things and we've gladly overpaid for things in the past. Right?
Eli Mishal (28:50)
Sure. Sure. No, it's not.
I
give you more further. think that the fact that there is a... It goes back again to the same point, which you said earlier, which is like the comparison part, right? Like how people are actually buying a vehicle. Let's start with that. They're buying a vehicle by comparing what is out there, right? In relation to what they're looking for, right? So if let's say I'm looking for an SUV, perhaps, right?
Vanja Terzic (29:16)
Okay.
Eli Mishal (29:22)
I will look at the budget that I have. I will say, okay, this is how much I'm capable of paying, know, payments or cash, whatever that is. And then I'm look what is out there. What is it that the market has to offer in that range of, you know, segments that I have, you know.
Vanja Terzic (29:42)
And usually
there's quite a few in the in those situations. There's quite a few listings of those. It's not like there's two listings. You're right. You're going to have dozens of listings. Yeah.
Eli Mishal (29:48)
Absolutely, Yeah, unless
you're looking again into a specific trim which is very rare, but yeah doesn't...
Vanja Terzic (29:54)
or a classic or a rare car. So excluding
those, the majority of sales are not those, right? We're talking about those people. Yeah.
Eli Mishal (30:00)
Sure, yes, correct.
So that's something that we have to kind of like look into at all times because... that doesn't change. Even though we are looking in order to improve this whole procedure from the dealer side, the consumer is still acting the same at all times. It's the same mechanism over and over again. And it doesn't really matter either is my mom trying to buy a car or me.
trying to buy a car. There's no difference, right? ⁓
Vanja Terzic (30:30)
Yeah, yeah, there's that
consistent baseline, but over time it feels like AI is just going to make that part a lot more important as time goes on.
Eli Mishal (30:37)
Well,
it really depends because AI can come in so many different types of forms and we can see it right at the back right now as we're speaking and AI not necessarily makes it good. I give you a classic scenario.
Vanja Terzic (30:52)
Well, no, no, no. Wait a minute. Let me backtrack. So those
human elements, the human components that we're talking about, the more AI that comes out, which is non-personal, it's only going to make those things a lot more important and a lot more valuable.
Eli Mishal (31:08)
Yeah, sure.
Vanja Terzic (31:08)
which
is the relationship, which is the trust, which is the follow-up, right? Because like the price drop automations that you talked about in our system, you don't think they're AI. Wait a minute, wait a minute. The system that's triggering out those price drop notifications, you're not gonna think they're No one's gonna think they're AI because it's gonna say, John, I just wanna let you know, ta ta ta ta ta.
Eli Mishal (31:13)
Sure. Yeah.
But let me ask you a question. want to refer out. Yeah, sure, go ahead.
Yes.
Sure, yeah, it's very personalized, but I wanna stop
go for it.
Vanja Terzic (31:34)
So
they're going to send out a text message. They're going to say, Hey, John, this is so and so just want to let you know I dropped this price at that point. It doesn't feel like an AI, correct? Okay.
Eli Mishal (31:39)
Yes.
Well, no, it doesn't.
But wait a second, you know, that's what I'm trying to refer to. When at what moment of time an AI feels like an AI, that's a question. That's a million dollar question, right? Like I give you an example, like what if that AI start bombarding you with so many text messages to the point where you're like, my God, this is overwhelming. Like stop sending me messages. I don't want to hear about you.
Vanja Terzic (31:57)
Yes. Yes, correct. Correct.
Eli Mishal (32:12)
stop talking to me, I don't want to do anything with you. Where is the balance between like a normal to not normal, where you're like killing it, you know, like you're doing too much, right?
Vanja Terzic (32:18)
Yeah. Totally. Yeah. That's a good question. It's like
at what po... So what was that again? At what point does an AI...
What was the question?
Eli Mishal (32:34)
At what point an AI becomes too aggressive? That's the question.
Vanja Terzic (32:39)
At what point does it really does it feel like an AI?
Eli Mishal (32:43)
Well, sure. Yeah. But but at the same time, being aggressive because a human perhaps won't have the time to make another follow up and another follow up and another follow up. So by nature, I understand as a consumer, something is going on over here and it's not the human. There's no way in the world this human sending me this message. I don't care how wonderful it's written and personalized. You know what I mean? So.
Vanja Terzic (33:05)
Yeah, okay. So it's like there's
a fine line, but there's a fine line with AI becoming spam, kind of like what happened with email, right? For those of you old enough to remember.
Eli Mishal (33:10)
Yes.
Correct. Yes. Robocalls, right? Robocalls?
Who doesn't, in today's like, who doesn't experience robocalls? Like, my phone doesn't stop ringing literally like nonstop. Crazy.
Vanja Terzic (33:22)
Yeah, 100%. Yeah,
we had we had letters. And then we had mass mailings. Right? We had direct phone calls. And we got Hey, I'm Rachel, direct robo calls, right. And then we had personalized emails, one on one communication. Then we had spam emails. We had text messaging, spam text. So basically everything that we've used as a communication channel has
Eli Mishal (33:31)
That's right. And then we move to Robocalls.
Yeah. Yeah.
That's right.
Yes.
Vanja Terzic (33:52)
Eventually becomes there. There's a huge spam component to it right so And that's gonna happen with AI no matter how you look at it. No matter who gets into the game. You're gonna have a million companies Yeah, you're right. You're right. So I guess there is an art to this that leverages AI as an assistant not to the point where it feels like AI because AI feels like spam
Eli Mishal (33:56)
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Yes, yes. It's happening right now, Vanja. It's happening right now as we're speaking, you know?
That's right.
That's right.
Vanja Terzic (34:22)
Not because maybe not because people are afraid of it, but because people are frustrated by it. You know, I'm fucking frustrated by it. If if I had a spam call by somebody, I would respect that a lot more. You know, I saw an ad. I don't know what it's called. like, hey, here's a here's a sales agent that can handle those conversations for you. Remember that we call the company. We demoed it because we want to know it was horrific. After five minutes, the first time that it slips.
Eli Mishal (34:41)
Yes.
Yes. Yeah, he does.
Vanja Terzic (34:51)
And it slips all the time, but let's say you have
a 10 minute conversation. First time it slips. I'm like, what, am I doing? What am I doing? I feel like, I feel like an idiot for doing this.
Eli Mishal (35:02)
Okay. What do you mean idiot? In what way?
Vanja Terzic (35:03)
don't you? Huh?
I feel like an idiot for having a reasonable conversation with a machine.
Eli Mishal (35:13)
I see what you mean. Yeah, well, because it's a machine in the end of the day and you, it feels like a machine too. So, and that's the kind of like, you know, tiny border between realizing you're talking to a machine versus talking to a human. And we have to be in the mission at all times to keep it so it feels like a human. It doesn't feel like a machine.
Vanja Terzic (35:14)
You know?
machine. Right? Right.
our industry, we go back to COVID, you know, and as the as the needs change for the consumer, the needs change for the dealer and as the needs change for the dealer and the consumer, the needs change for software companies like us, you know, and some software companies roll with the needs. Others stay stagnant and only market the needs. Right. So like if we're to
Eli Mishal (35:53)
Yes.
Yes, sure.
Vanja Terzic (36:03)
Imagine someone's building an AI and says, OK, on the back of the AI, there's still a human component to your company because that is your authenticity. matter how you look at it, right? So we're here having these conversations because we want to hear from dealers. We want to tackle industry problems. We want to document the process. We don't mind talking about failures. But at the end of the day,
Eli Mishal (36:11)
I mean, why to think it like, let's just say that's what we do in here.
That's right.
Well,
let's be honest really, really quickly. Like we created this entire open, know, kitchen in a way in order to receive those criticism, in order to learn from it as fast as we can so we can implement as fast as we can, you know, so we can improve as fast as we can. Because again, our mission is to make sales, you know, and help the dealer make as many sales as we can help him to make. And so having this kind of discussion open to everybody
Vanja Terzic (36:43)
Right, so.
Eli Mishal (36:55)
allows us to do so.
So the idea of this channel to begin with is to have our discussions as open as wide as they can be, right? In order for people to be able to see what we're doing in our kitchen. It's like imagine going into a restaurant and having a big, you know, clear...
glass where you can see what's going on in the kitchen. And that's exactly what we're doing in here. We're opening to the public. And I think it's a very entrepreneur way to kind of allow people to enter in and for us to be influenced by what people say, like commenting on what we're saying and doing what we're doing. And I think this whole thing, that's what it's all about, is being criticized.
is being open to be criticized. We're not afraid of being criticized at all. And that's something that defines us in so many ways, right? Like think about it, how wonderful that is to be criticized, you know, and not being afraid of being criticized because again, our speed of implementation, it's so fast to the point where we're like, okay, we see an issue, we kind of analyze the issue, we're trying to...
grab as much data as we can of the issue and then we're like creating either a patch or a fix or maybe doing a split test whatever that is in order to overcome that issue as fast as we can you know and that's what defines us that's what makes us better as a company if that makes sense
Vanja Terzic (38:38)
Yes. So back to what we talking about, there's people behind every product. No matter how you look at it, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter that even with AI, there's people behind every single product, right? So there's no reason to hide behind AI. There's no reason to hide behind marketing. know, and for example, back to the software conversation, like I was saying, a lot of software companies kind of just like
Eli Mishal (38:42)
Yes.
Yes.
Vanja Terzic (39:03)
Fundamentally stay like this, but market like that as time goes on, you know, and To build a software or anything for any industry, you have to spend time in this industry and spending time in the industry is not having a form that says, hey, tell us what features you'd like. Spending time in the industry is openly talking about it, discussing the issues, discussing the problems, discussing the wins, discussing the benefits, discussing the tips of what other people are doing.
Eli Mishal (39:07)
Okay, sure.
Vanja Terzic (39:32)
And also like, you know, Both you and me, what do we do on a weekend? You know, when, when there's downtime, we go to a lot, we go to a franchise store. So we go to our friends who are in the industry. You live the business, you talk to business and you have to. because a lot of the time when people ask for something, it's not really what they need. And sometimes the things that in any business that people need, it's very hard to ask for. And sometimes easier for someone from.
Eli Mishal (39:42)
Yes. We have to. We have to. We have to. We have to.
Vanja Terzic (39:59)
from the side to see and we've had so many of these conversations.
Eli Mishal (40:01)
brings me back
to those ideas and times where we, as a business owners and developer, me, myself, and trying to figure what else can we do in order to help those car dealers and what can we build, what can we improve, what can we achieve in order for them to make more sales. And I think that we end up spending a lot of times, like sometimes even months in some situations,
just to be able to achieve that one thing that not necessarily really worked in a way. And I think that makes the whole difference because opening our, again, kitchen for everybody to criticize and say, okay, what's wrong with this dish? me. And gathering not just data, but getting a feel of the field, like what's going on in the field for reals. Like you're saying, like we're spending literally our entire life
In the last 13 years now, trying to gather information and understanding the dealers and what they're experiencing, so we can improve the technology and which can influence again back to sales. And that's something that defines us in today's world. That's what makes us different.
Vanja Terzic (40:56)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, because
We started Goxee not to build a software company. We started this whole thing in order to fix points of frustration that we had when we were in the business running the business. You know, That was 13, almost 14 years ago now. you know.
Eli Mishal (41:18)
Correct.
Yes.
Yeah, I
think we're sharing something in common, Vanja. It's a great time to say that. There's a lot of different types of people in the world. And I think me and you sharing something very much like that is making us alike, which we like to help people in general. It wasn't to make money to start with. It was helping our close people so they can make money. But it wasn't about the money to start with.
When I started this business, my way of thinking, it's like, how can I make my cousin more money?
Vanja Terzic (42:06)
Yep. So we were curious, pissed
off and excited at the same time. Curious, pissed off and excited. We were curious because we knew there's more out there. We were pissed off because the software that was out there for independent dealers had nothing to do with car dealerships and whoever built it, never spent a fucking day on the lot selling a car. And you can see that by how it works.
Eli Mishal (42:10)
Sure, yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, and the technology too, it was just very off.
That's Yeah, I
mean, let's kind of break it down. there's even in today, most of the companies, okay, who run this industry are either the background of the people behind the scenes are either software engineers who have no idea about car dealerships or on the other end, you have just car dealers running software companies, but they have no idea about technology. So I mean, the cross between me and you,
Vanja Terzic (42:34)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm Right or banks
Eli Mishal (42:56)
makes the whole difference in a way if you think about it. Like I'm coming with bringing, of course, the technology and of course, the dealership, know, expertise too, because I run a dealership. I bought and sold cars on the streets and, you know, I've done it all. I know the entire procedure because I lived it. If I, you know, get into this country to start with and then you run a dealership yourself. But not just that, we both sharing the marketing side of things, which is literally everything about the sale. If you think about it, right, like
Vanja Terzic (42:58)
Yeah, yeah, 100%.
Eli Mishal (43:27)
For me, it was more about building websites and delivering messages to the outside world so people can actually look at your either service or product and be able to kind of like say, I would like to have this service. I would like to have this product because it's this and that, whatever that is. And it was all about delivering messaging at all times. And you, I mean, you can speak for it. mean, you've done so much, all kinds of different things. You've done
Vanja Terzic (43:45)
Right, right.
Eli Mishal (43:56)
printing for so many years, you've done websites with me too, you've done car sales for a couple of good amount of years. You're very much like, there's so much in you, man.
Vanja Terzic (43:58)
geez. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We've done a lot of things. A lot of things. Yeah.
Yeah, for me is a big component of
the has been the sales process and in the sales funnel. but a big part of yeah, building people up and motivating people to kind of have a best version of themselves, however they choose to run it. was never like a hey, here's a black and white approach. You know, and unfortunately, you know, there's not always a lot of long term value in that, you know, the people that really want to learn.
Eli Mishal (44:13)
and helping people, right?
Absolutely.
Vanja Terzic (44:33)
are typically going to pick up and do their own thing. that's happened plenty of times and that's okay too. But what was really difficult in any one of these businesses was to scale it in a way where you have some type of advantage. Because to start a small car dealership, back then was a lot easier than it is today. We're talking about 2009, 10, 11, even though was after the
08, crisis in the cash, you know, cash for clunkers program. It was a lot easier than it is today because the consumers, the con there wasn't the power was on the dealer side. You can make money on the back end. We find it. I don't even need to get into that, but it's much more difficult today. And in times where their difficulty is higher, we need tools to help us cut through the crap. And we got into this to build those tools because
Eli Mishal (45:04)
Uh-huh, uh-huh.
Yes.
Vanja Terzic (45:29)
You know, I couldn't afford to pay 2500 bucks back then for for V auto when we had 20 cars on the lot. I couldn't do it. You know, I mean, I tried it for a couple of months, but it got expensive. You know, on top of that, you got your marketing, you got all these other factors. But not having that the franchise store down the street or, you know, somebody three times the size having it hurt my business, hurt my business tremendously. You know.
Eli Mishal (45:50)
Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah,
for sure.
Vanja Terzic (45:55)
Somebody
with a better website, somebody with, better Craigslist ads hurt my business tremendously. You know, just because they could afford to have the software. think whoever has the ability to deliver a good value, to fill a need and to build trust in the process should win.
Eli Mishal (46:01)
Absolutely.
Well, I think what defines win is more of like how many cells you can make in the end of the day. And so that's the winner, right? I mean, if you can help me make cells, I will sign up with you. It's very simple. I'll give you my business. It's very simple, you know?
Vanja Terzic (46:20)
Yeah, should be winning.
Absolutely. You
have so many cardio's nationwide today, right now nationwide who have been in the business for a really long time and you have some who just got into the business. Okay, they're they're working their asses off. Okay, they're doing it the right way. They're taking care of their customer. Something goes wrong after the fact they take care of the customer, right? But if that doesn't come across to the customer, if it doesn't come across to their in their reputation, they can no benefit from this.
Eli Mishal (46:32)
Yes.
Yes.
Absolutely.
Yes.
Vanja Terzic (46:58)
Who gets the benefit? The one who might have a bigger budget and is bullshitting the reputation kind of like a lot of software companies. That what we were just talking about, right?
Eli Mishal (47:07)
Well, you know,
usually the bigger fish, obviously you're going to survive more, it's just normal. That's the way the world is designed and shaped. If you got bigger budget, naturally you're having more power. ⁓
Vanja Terzic (47:15)
Sure,
They do. You're right.
They do have bigger budgets, but sometimes there's that old saying, you know, the air is very thin at the top, you know, and when you're small, you're very flexible and you're able to make fast decisions and fast pivots, which large dealerships are not, but you can't start your day copying and pasting what everybody else is doing.
Eli Mishal (47:39)
Well, but guess what? I mean, we're in such an industry that almost every car dealer is copy pasting from each other. mean, no offense on anybody, but that's how this whole industry has been shaped in the recent 20 years.
Vanja Terzic (47:49)
You're right.
You're right, but they're copying and pasting shortcuts. That's what they're copying and pasting.
Eli Mishal (47:54)
They do,
they at least think that's what's gonna give them the edge, at least.
Vanja Terzic (47:57)
Right? So long
car gurus right now, you know, you're going to see that majority of photos are still not good enough. The descriptions are auto generated by a software. have no personality. Right. You call 10 car dealerships right now. If we were to get them on the line, talk to sales. I guarantee probably two of them will be fire. So there's so many things that can still be done because as a owner of a dealership, you have absolute control of how you pick up your phone or how your two or three people pick up the phone.
Eli Mishal (48:16)
Yeah, for sure.
That's right. Yes.
Vanja Terzic (48:27)
how they follow up, what they
do, how they take care of your customers, how you get reviews. We didn't even talk about getting reviews. And that's a lot harder for a large franchise store because you might have 20, 30 sales reps. You're gonna have your team meetings, you're gonna have your team buildings, you're gonna buy amazing courses for everybody to get better at sales and all this stuff and nobody's gonna read them, no one's gonna follow through.
Eli Mishal (48:34)
That's right.
Listen, the
more people, the more units you have on the lot, the less control you have, it's very simple.
Vanja Terzic (48:55)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, unless
Eli Mishal (48:56)
Right? mean, imagine if you have 20 people to
talk to and hope that all the 20 will will follow your instructions. I mean, that's not reasonable to think that way because it's it's human. You're depending on the human, you know.
Vanja Terzic (49:03)
Right.
Unless you have the systems, you know, because we're doing a lot of stuff that we shouldn't even be doing right now. There's sales reps who are not doing what they should be doing and doing what they shouldn't be doing. And this is where that AI needs to fit in. It needs to do the shit for them that they shouldn't be doing anyways, but is of value and does not jeopardize the AI spam effect on the customer and still builds trust.
Eli Mishal (49:10)
That's right.
Yes. Absolutely.
Correct, correct. That's
again, that's a challenge. That's a challenge that we will continue facing in the coming years and we need to make sure that we finding a balance place where we don't really, you know, we don't burn it because it's very easy to burn it. You know, especially with a customer who is just checking on availability and all of a sudden received like.
Vanja Terzic (49:59)
Absolutely.
Eli Mishal (50:00)
of like follow-ups and just like, know what? I'm not gonna do business with this guy, that's for sure. He's hustling me, you know?
Vanja Terzic (50:03)
Right. Yeah.
Absolutely. Absolutely. Like I reached out, you know, I got my car maybe April. I'm still getting bombarded with total bullshit text messages that are autoresponder and have nothing to do with what what I talked about. You know, and on top of that, we're like, we appreciate you and we're thankful. Fuck you. You're full of shit. And I know you're full of shit, you know, and you're bombarding my personal cell phone.
Eli Mishal (50:11)
Mm-hmm.
I bet. I bet.
Absolutely. That's right.
Yes.
Vanja Terzic (50:34)
Not good, man. But anyways, cool.
Eli Mishal (50:36)
Yeah.