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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.
Eli Mishal (00:01)
I'm gonna tell you what we're talking about today. We're talking about today one of the most crucial and sensitive topic that most car dealers don't like to talk about. Yeah, super sensitive because people intend to kind of either forget about it, not talk about it, avoid it, ignore it, you call it whatever you want. And which is the marketing, the marketing and how much ⁓ I know.
Vanja Terzic (00:10)
Sensitive.
All right.
Ooh, tough topic.
Eli Mishal (00:27)
Like where you're actually receiving your leads from as a car dealer. you know, we, me and you, talked over this topic over the years, over and over again, we flipped it over and over again, trying to like, you know, bring it to the attention of the car dealers and they just don't like to talk about it. Either they just want to ignore it completely, like completely ignoring it or they just don't care.
Vanja Terzic (00:30)
Oi.
Yep.
Eli Mishal (00:56)
They literally don't care that all they care about is just being out there and spending thousands of dollars and not necessarily really try to figure out what they're getting for that thousands of dollars. So
Vanja Terzic (01:11)
Well, it's
kind of like an uncontrolled pain point. You know, we've, let's start with ourselves. We've done, you know, we, we've done a lot of ads in the past, and sometimes you get to a point where you're at the mercy of somebody else's algorithm. You're at, you're, so you, You think you have control, but at the end of the day, you really don't have control. But at the same time, if you don't do it, leads don't come. So you're, you're at the mercy of something that's uncontrolled and it's not always positive. So maybe that's why people don't
Eli Mishal (01:33)
That's right.
Vanja Terzic (01:40)
don't want to see it. Doesn't mean they shouldn't.
Eli Mishal (01:44)
Yeah, I don't know. I'd be honest with you. I think there are different reasons why people don't want to kind of go deep dive deep into why and where those leads are actually coming from. know, and, know, as I mentioned earlier, it's a very sensitive topic. And I got to say a couple of things that might be very hard to be heard. A lot of those leads are fake.
So if you look at the first layer, like what comes in, okay, I'll elaborate on that. So I'll get to it in just a second. pretty much Every dealer looks at how many leads they've received from that one vendor, right? And that's kind of their only metric.
Vanja Terzic (02:14)
What do mean fake? Like fake, what do you mean fake?
Mm-hmm.
Eli Mishal (02:32)
They don't really go dive deep into how many they actually have discussion with, how many they end up having on the lot, okay? And obviously the ones that they end up selling cars to, which is number one metric, number one most important number in this entire equation. And I think that that's something that's being avoided for so many years by so many car dealers.
Vanja Terzic (02:37)
Okay.
Eli Mishal (02:57)
and really not for the good reasons, honestly.
Vanja Terzic (03:01)
So you're talking about the, like in any lead, there's a type of funnel. So you have top of the funnel, you have bottom of the funnel. Bottom of the funnel is like someone who's basically ready to buy from you. Top of the funnel is, can be a, I don't know, a Facebook message that says, hey, I'm interested in this car. right? So what you're saying is that a lot of dealers are only paying attention to the top of the funnel, which contains a lot of junk and spam and trash and...
Eli Mishal (03:24)
right. Just the first surface which... that's right.
Vanja Terzic (03:31)
All best.
Eli Mishal (03:31)
Well in fact, without again mentioning names of any third parties for the sake of kind of respecting them, you know, because they're our colleagues in a way, we're working with them very closely, But many of those, even the biggest ones, are faking leads. you know, and let's talk about that. That's... yeah.
Vanja Terzic (03:49)
Yeah. Well, hold on. Let's
talk about how we know that because because We've had a lot of people say to us, I don't think these leads are real. But how do know that?
Eli Mishal (04:01)
Well, I'll give you couple of reasons.
We'll start with the fact that, you know, sometimes when you're trying to reach back to them, they just don't respond, right? And that's like the first indicator from the dealer perspective of like figure out, this is not a true lead. This is not the real person. Okay, that's number one. Number two, sure, we did created a network kind of of a pinpoint in which we can figure out in a
Vanja Terzic (04:07)
Mm-hmm.
Eli Mishal (04:25)
very, I will say, analysis that happens behind the scenes to figure out if a lead is real or not. And how is that? We see a sequences, you know, perhaps like our network is produced or created by many car dealers across the country. And so if we get to see certain phone numbers that popping up over and over again, that being used by
Those third parties, right? We can see right off the bat that those are fake. They're literally fake. They're using certain virtual phone numbers very much to create this kind of like, you know, a lead inquiry through that site that comes through an ADF, which reaches your CRM somehow. And You end up trying to reach to them. They never pick up the phone.
they never call you back. they never do anything. And those sequences are literally coming back into our ecosystem in which we can kind of figure out very easily. So we kind of flagging those phone numbers over time. within, I will say, less than like a couple of weeks, we can just say, okay, this is a fake lead for sure. And we've seen it happening for so many years now. And, you know,
Vanja Terzic (05:43)
Mm-hmm.
Eli Mishal (05:46)
again, influence that Those leads are influencing that first surface as we spoke earlier, which kind of give you a feel that you're getting what you're supposed to get for that kind of money that you're spending. And in some cases, you're spending like three and four and five grand just to get some leads. And they're promising you a certain number. And so those third parties are literally trying to like, you know,
send you your way, whatever leads, even in the cost of like their fake props, you know?
Vanja Terzic (06:18)
Yeah, so,
so probably, mean, You've got a lot of franchise groups who do forensic lead audits, right? I mean, They're looking at numbers. like, okay, what's our cost per lead to where they are in the funnel? But the majority of dealers don't do that. The majority of dealers say, Hey, I signed up with hypothetically, let's just say CarGurus. I signed up with CarGurus and I'm getting a bunch of leads. I'm getting a bunch of text messages. I'm getting a bunch of notifications. So if
Eli Mishal (06:26)
Yes.
Mm-hmm.
Vanja Terzic (06:46)
We talked yesterday, not you know, I keep going back to this 8080 2080 20. And most of you probably heard it, it goes back to 1600. And it was 8020 is 20 % of the things that you track lead to 80 % of your results or the time invested lead to 80 % of results, whatever. But the goal is 20 % of your leads are probably really good quality leads. But you need to understand where that money is being invested to get that. So we're
Where are you putting in your money to get the quality leads? I think that's really the question because if you want to get a lot of leads, we can get you a lot of leads for 10 cents a lead running it through a Facebook campaign. I mean, this was happening during COVID, right? The tables turned. During COVID, it was like, I can't handle any more leads. I need help qualifying these leads. So if I was a, let's say I start a new
Eli Mishal (07:25)
That's right.
Vanja Terzic (07:43)
business or you start, we start a new business, which is a marketplace. What better way to get people excited about the marketplace than sending them leads right away.
Eli Mishal (07:55)
Sure, but let's focus on the main agenda here and in which it's being able to track, being able to understand, being able to kind of figure out what you're getting for that money that you're spending again. And there are, you know, let's go one step backwards just for a second. You know, One of your number one biggest expenses as a car dealer, it's marketing. Most of your money goes there and naturally
that You know as a car dealer that this is affects your entire business. right? Like you said earlier, like if you're not on CarGurus, you're not existing in a way in today's market. And same applies to some other channels too, but car gurus, I will say probably is one of the biggest or maybe the biggest at this point. And they worked it, they worked it very hard over the years, you know, and they try to make a ⁓ pretty good and
clear and as transparent as they could make for the consumer in which made a good platform for consumer to look for a car to a certain extent, of course, sure. But the point is that, again, and Without again mentioning any name of any third party, they're all faking leads in which, again, hurts really bad to car dealers. And the reason is
Vanja Terzic (08:52)
Mm-hmm.
Eli Mishal (09:15)
⁓ is because the dealer themselves don't bother going deep dive deep into what's the actual numbers that comes after the first surface, you know, in which that's kind of the most crucial part of every business, especially car dealers again, because, you know, they're depending on that, you know, and what we've done over the years is we created a service called Monitor
in our CRM, in which takes in consideration all of your phone calls, all the text messages you're receiving, all type of communication, including even inquiries from third party sites. And that kind of accumulates into one central place, which kind of create a place to go to in which you can see all the statistics and what's involved in from your marketing, you know,
segments. So you understand in a way what you're getting from every third party. But that's again not enough. Why? Because even though we created this beautiful UI which makes it pretty much laid out very clear, still a lot of people are not using it. Or if they're using it, they're not using it properly. And the reason for that again is because
No offense on car dealers, but most of them are not trying to think deep into the numbers. They're focusing on the unit. They're focusing on the sale. And they're very much ignoring the big picture, which is like, okay, I'm spending, let's say, don't know, 10 grand, perhaps, you know, on a marketing. Where am I getting my sales from? You know, where should I put my actual money? Should I maybe take a little bit from here, try to push it a little bit more through there?
Maybe I should just remove this completely channel because I'm not getting anything from it. And you know that comes down back into you know some some dealers that appears to be in a location or there are certain vehicles body styles or price range that works better versus other places, you know that kind of like can affect where you advertise because I give you a clear simple example. I don't think a lot of people advertise.
in Craigslist like ⁓ 100k plus vehicles. And I think the reason for that is because Craigslist has been for many years known and recognized for you're get a good deal over there. know, and so exactly, but not just not just by dealer too for so many years, not by owner only, not at all. Yeah.
Vanja Terzic (11:43)
For sale, for sale by owner, for sale by owner.
But as far as the consumer, the consumer,
the mindset is like, you know, I might as well check Craigslist because there might be a good deal from a private party on Craigslist.
Eli Mishal (11:59)
Well, not because of
that, but because, you know, again, the market of the vehicles that appears on Craigslist are more like a five grand to 10 grand kind of those ranges where you're going to find a very good deal. Something that probably someone just wanted to post it very easily, fast and easy. And you probably going to end up finding that deal on Craigslist. And of course, over the years, things have changed and, know, offer up came along.
the lines and then Facebook marketplace, right? And all those things. And I think Facebook marketplace today is like the new Craigslist of the old days. ⁓ Even though it does not have as much inventory as Craigslist used to have on the good days, know? ⁓ Super, super powerplay. And I think that as soon as, know, again, without talking anything bad about Craigslist, because we do love Craigslist in a way, we, we
Vanja Terzic (12:32)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, Craigslist was a power player, absolutely.
Eli Mishal (12:53)
very much like build a big portion of our business at the beginning of time based on Craigslist because we created the best Craigslist platform and it's still, in my opinion, one of the best platforms to advertise again on those ranges of prices where it matters and where it works, know, props. But definitely, know, things has been shifted, you know, and they will continue being shifting, throws different channels in different places and...
And it's really important to encourage car dealers to advertise where it matters at that moment in time. And not just stick into, OK, this is my bill. I got to pay car gurus. I got to pay Craigslist. I got to pay whoever that is. ⁓
Vanja Terzic (13:41)
But maybe it's a little deeper
than that though. Maybe it's a little deeper than that because from what, and I could be wrong last time. mean, I could be wrong. It hasn't, it's been a while since I looked at these things was when you sign up with, for example, CarGurus, AutoTrader, Cars.com, let's say those three. Don't they put you into a contract? Sure.
Eli Mishal (14:01)
No, in
fact, yeah, 100%. They're offering you in today market, they're offering you most of them kind of a free trial in a way. And they're trying to lock you into a three month kind of a contract or maybe I should say like a quarterly thing.
Vanja Terzic (14:10)
Okay.
Let me let me look that up. Let
me let me just make make sure because it's it's important to us, right? If a dealer is stuck in a channel, you can just pivot and get out of the channel.
Eli Mishal (14:30)
Well, no, that's not the case because I think neither one of those companies can afford at this point to do a contract. Currently, all days they used to be more like, okay, let me lock you in for a long time so you're gonna get the better deal. But today it's not the case. In fact, I'm aware of that because I talked to one of our dealers not too long ago, about like two weeks ago in which he got, know, they begged him, they begged him really bad. And we're talking about CarGuru specifically in this case.
Vanja Terzic (14:50)
right.
Okay.
Eli Mishal (15:00)
Yeah, they're desperate. mean, this entire industry is desperate because, know, sales has been decreasing tremendously in the last, I will say, year or two. we're, you know, like some car dealers that you can ask, they're going to say, you know, we don't really know what's going to happen tomorrow. And that's a tough moment for many, car dealers.
Vanja Terzic (15:21)
Hmm.
Eli Mishal (15:23)
But that's kind of like the moment when you do need to, again, I wanna go back to that. You do need to kind of figure out, okay, what works, what's not working. And if it's not working, I need to walk away from it. I can't stick to it. If I stick to it, that doesn't give me any benefits, but having leads that literally not converting. You know what I mean?
Vanja Terzic (15:46)
I
look, I agree. I'm on board 100 % because anything that's not working, you need to track, measure and replace. it's, it's really complex. mean, geez, I remember when I was in the industry, it's gotten a lot more complicated now than it was then to advertise, you know, back then it was just like, pound on Craigslist, right? Maybe hit CarGurus, maybe auto trader, and that's it. That was it. There was, you know, there was maybe Facebook groups. But today,
Eli Mishal (15:53)
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Vanja Terzic (16:12)
So a dealer is going to look at, got autotradercars.com, CarGurus, got Carfax, Classifieds, right? And everything else that you look at outside of those is experimental. It's totally experimental. So if you look at, mean, I'm not really even listing offer up, Craigslist is experimental because there's a right and wrong way to do Craigslist. A lot of dealers are still doing Craigslist completely the wrong way for reasons we can talk about in another session. You've got Craigslist,
Eli Mishal (16:22)
Yes.
Vanja Terzic (16:41)
experimental. And the reason it's it's it's experiment. The reason it's experimental is because the software providers that are publishing these ads could be doing it wrong. So you're dependent on the software that you use. Number one.
Eli Mishal (16:56)
They're not,
⁓ could be doing it wrong. They're actually doing it wrong for a very long time. People spending thousands of dollars on Craigslist, let's just say it. People need to be aware. People don't really understand Craigslist. Neither the companies who advertise on Craigslist or the dealer themselves, they just putting their mercy in the hands of the software company who intend to say, you know what, we're the best at doing it. But they haven't done it for long enough to kind of have the right metrics and the right...
Vanja Terzic (17:00)
Yeah, right. That's true.
Okay.
Eli Mishal (17:22)
you know, data to be able to analyze and figure out if it works or not. We do we we've done for so many years. Yeah, so
Vanja Terzic (17:27)
Yeah, there's a lot of caveats there. Yeah, there's a lot. Yeah,
there's a lot of caveats like campaigns. There's a million things that we have in our back end that really, yeah, that empower you to do really well on Craigslist. So you've got Craigslist that is dependent on the software that you use. Now you've got Google ad.
Eli Mishal (17:32)
Yeah. And we'll talk about it another time, but yeah, sure.
Correct.
But I
gotta just add to this. There is a reason why. The reason is because Craigslist format, in a sense, works where you publish an ad and it lasts only 30 days. And the format of the actual listing by default is by relevance. Or maybe I should say like the most recent goes to the top. So if let's say you post into a location which
you know, the rotation over there is super fast speed and it just moves so fast. Your ad will end up being within an hour or an hour and a half. The worst case scenario in LA, for example, is going to go all way to the second page. So you're not really going to get that much traffic as you. Correct.
Vanja Terzic (18:20)
Yeah, it's ⁓
Right, but so you are dependent on the software that you use to succeed
or not succeed on Craigslist. If you do a manually, you're out of luck, number one.
Eli Mishal (18:34)
Yeah. Yeah, Craigslist, I think
Craigslist as a whole, it's a all different kind of an animal. And if you don't understand Craigslist, you should not even do it or try it. Yeah, that's why a lot of people walking away from Craigslist, by the way, speaking of.
Vanja Terzic (18:41)
But it's marketing. Well, I know it's a marketing channel, though, right? So you have your you have
your let's say your big four. Everything else is an experimental marketing channel. So you have Craigslist that's dependent on the software that you use in order to succeed. Number one. Number two, you have Google ads, which are which are basically vehicle listings. But that's not dependent on a software that you use. It's dependent on an agency that you use to advertise. OK, number two.
Eli Mishal (18:52)
Yes.
Sure. Yes.
Same, they're the same.
Well, well, it's the same, right?
I mean, it's the same in the end of the day. Yeah, sure. You're depending on, listen, everywhere, I'm going to put it this way, everywhere that where you have the possibilities to do a customization of any kind, it gives that flexibility in which that flexibility turns into an advantage of someone who knows what to do with that flexibility. And majority of people, let's be honest, you know what?
Vanja Terzic (19:14)
No, no it's not the same.
Mm-hmm.
Eli Mishal (19:38)
They're not tech savvy and those even software companies has created themselves based on the same kind of like picture trying to paint themselves as like an expert at something, but they're not really are all right as an expert. So Craigslist have their own, it's own kind of, you know, metrics and how you gonna get the most out of the advertisement.
Google Ads is the same, there's no difference because there is so many different ways to advertise on Google Ads too. You can do all kinds of different ads, you can do a different scheduling, you can do a different locations, you can do so many things. there's no, I don't see a lot of difference between the two. Of course, of course, it's a different dinosaur, but yeah.
Vanja Terzic (20:15)
Yeah.
Sure, I see a huge difference. I
see a massive difference between the two. Massive difference because when you use one software that, for example, I'm just gonna take our software. When you use that, it's gonna basically lay out everything that you'd need to do to get it right. It doesn't require a massive human element or component to analyze and to think as much as let's say Facebook ads or Google ads.
Because here's what happens with Facebook ads and Google ads. We've seen a lot of this with what we've been doing too. For example, Facebook ads, Facebook algo algorithm changes so much and so frequently. It's always changing. we would have ads that are running for six months doing fantastic and all of a sudden boom overnight gone, right? So a dealer has to depend on a marketing agency to run these ads and that
that company typically sets up these ads and they just let them run, right? They're gonna make their little tweaks and stuff like that, but it's so difficult to find a marketing agency who's really on top of this stuff for Facebook, for Google. mean, Craigslist is more automated in a sense. Let's just say that way. then you look at Craigslist is a lot, well, when you use our Craigslist software, it's a lot more.
Eli Mishal (21:32)
Craigslist? No, it's not. Yeah, but it's not automated
by any means. Not at all.
Vanja Terzic (21:39)
If you use the right software, it's automated. There's no software.
Eli Mishal (21:43)
But still, this is the thing, I think you're getting it wrong in a way. I think Craigslist, Facebook ads, Instagram, whatever, TikTok ads, Google ads, they're all under the same segment. You're setting a budget, however you do it, you're scheduling it, and you're just spending the money. And there's no guarantees, right?
Vanja Terzic (22:09)
Well there's no guarantee it's the CarGurus either.
Eli Mishal (22:10)
But wait a second, there are so many different ways to do either Craigslist, Facebook, Google ads, TikTok, whatever that is, right? All those ads, know, ads. because I think Argo is more like a listing. It's not an ad. Huge difference between the two. At least, you know, for today world, yeah.
Vanja Terzic (22:29)
Craigslist is a listing too. When you go
to cars and trucks for sale, all you see is cars and trucks. When you go to Facebook, you go to your wall, Instagram, you go to a wall, you're gonna see motivators selling crystals for therapy, and then you're gonna see a car ad. It's completely different things. You're right.
Eli Mishal (22:41)
Yeah, but it's personalized, you see? Like if you
were not looking for cars recently, it's not gonna appear to you, so it's still an ad. So no matter how you look at this, it's coming from a different angle, sure, but it's still an ad and it is still, again, a budget and many different types of settings around it, you know?
Vanja Terzic (22:58)
Yes. Sure. But you
but but wait your car, your vehicle that you're advertising on, let's say Facebook or Instagram is going to be competing against a variety of other products and services, not just cars.
Eli Mishal (23:04)
huh. Yes.
Well, I'm not saying one more thing to just sharpen that point even more. Most of those ads will appear under Facebook Marketplace to begin with, in which if you go into the section of the vehicles in Facebook Marketplace, you're gonna get to see those ads over there mostly, most of the time. Okay, so it's not really true that you're gonna end up seeing it on some random pages, unless again, you were looking for that maybe, you know,
type of a car or whatever, you know, so that's kind of where it's going to go down to. But the point is, you know, forget about all of it. The most important thing is this to understand again, the core of all of it, you know? So yeah, sure. There's many ways to advertise on either one of those platforms. Even in car gurus, when you go to car gurus, you have like different tiers. Like you can spend more money if you would like to. They're going to take it. You know what I mean? Like
They're gonna tell you, what, we got 3000, you know, you got 5000, you got 10,000 if you need to, you know, and sure, yeah, they're gonna push you up as high as they can, especially in the first couple of weeks, you know, they're gonna make sure that, you know, you're gonna get a lot of leads and you're gonna start awfully, you know, sell some cars and you're gonna be very happy and that's when they're trying to lock you in, you know.
Vanja Terzic (24:16)
Mm-hmm.
So, okay, so.
For car dealer, the question is, why don't people look at the stats? Okay, why don't because we've had these conversations, you know, I personally I have set up tons of different back ends and settings and walk dealers who are like, okay, add in your expenses and do this and nobody goes back to it. So the question is, why? Why don't they care? But there's a there's there's a reason for that. It's not because it's not because dealers wake up in the morning and say, you know what, I don't get fucked fff about my business today. It's because maybe the reason they don't care
Eli Mishal (24:45)
That's right.
That's right. They don't care.
Yeah.
Vanja Terzic (25:06)
is because there's not a lot you can do about it. In there's a lot you can do about it. But hang with me, hang with me. So if if I go in and if I'm like, what else can I do? I can't become a marketing expert, right? I don't know all the new things that are constantly coming out with TikTok and with Facebook and with all these different things. Nobody can.
Eli Mishal (25:29)
Nobody can, nobody can, that's not their
job. No.
Vanja Terzic (25:31)
Right? Nobody can most marketing
agencies, they don't. Right? Correct. Correct. So why would somebody look at the results? I mean, maybe this is the mindset for, you know, mid small to mid sized dealers. Why don't I look at the results? If it is what it is, there's nothing I can do about it. Well, the reason you need to start looking at the results is
Eli Mishal (25:35)
They have hard time with that too, of course.
Mm-hmm.
Vanja Terzic (25:57)
So you can start planning on doing something about it because it doesn't make sense to do anything unless you know what It doesn't make sense to do anything unless you know what your cost per qualified lead is on a channel overall, right? So if I take three or four channels, if my cost per lead is what I have 50 bucks for qualified lead, let's just throw a number out there. right? If you start doing any other channel and it's under that amount, keep doing it. But if you don't know that number, what can you do?
Eli Mishal (26:01)
Well, you don't have to plan to do about it.
You have nothing to compare it to.
Vanja Terzic (26:27)
What can you do? You can't judge if a marketing agency is doing
Eli Mishal (26:27)
You have nothing to compare it that's right. Yeah.
Vanja Terzic (26:30)
a good job or not, because everything is relative and relevant to you. Your target market, your area, your location, your type of vehicle. So as much as people think like, ⁓ all these dealers are my competitors. Sure, they are. They're competing for views, right? But every dealership is different because you have a completely different inventory and you're in a different segment. Even if you're in the same city, you can iron that out. You can know.
Eli Mishal (26:56)
Well, think it comes down to a lot of dealers don't have the time taking the maybe out of the equation now completely because it's the reality. They just don't have the time during the day to look into those metrics. or to update those expenses as you mentioned. I think that's the biggest issue.
Vanja Terzic (27:12)
Sure, sure, OK, if if wait
a minute, if this was if this was June of 2021 and it was past, you know, the COVID peak or maybe the beginning of the whatever. Let me get back to this. Let me get back. There's plenty of time during a day.
Eli Mishal (27:23)
No, no, no, you're... Yeah, sure. It's not
about that time. That's not in their agenda. That's not in their day to day to do. It's not in their list to do.
Vanja Terzic (27:31)
a date on you mean so so it's
just not a time issue it's a focus I don't think so I don't think it's a time issue
Eli Mishal (27:37)
It is a time issue in their perspective. I'm telling you,
I tell you what, based on many talks, many, conversations I had with car dealers, they just can leverage the time to follow up on something that is in their perspective, not as important as waiting for a perhaps, you know, being ready for that call to come in. That's just like one example, right?
Vanja Terzic (28:02)
Okay.
Eli Mishal (28:04)
And I think that's the biggest issue. that's something that, you know, as much as we're going to try to educate people, we won't be able to change that. You know, that's this cultural thing when it comes to car dealership, you know, and either you're a one man show or, or a French dealership, you know, that, you know, French dealers likes a lot of, you know, metrics and reports, and they like to dive deep into numbers and blah, blah. But they're still missing that one most important metrics, metric, which, which is again,
Again, it's that number that says, okay, how many cars I sold through this channel, you know? And that's something that they're suffering from the most, the most. Yeah.
Vanja Terzic (28:41)
Sure, sure, agree, I agree,
but let's agree to not blame it on time.
Eli Mishal (28:46)
Well, I do
because that's the way they do. You see what I'm saying? Because that's what I've heard mostly, most of the time. that's their perspective and it's very hard to change.
Vanja Terzic (28:53)
Sure, You hear
a lot of excuses. That does not mean that you can blame it on that. You can't.
Eli Mishal (29:02)
Well, don't get me wrong.
Me personally, I'm not blaming it on the time whatsoever. I'm just saying like that's what they do. They blame it on time. Sure, but you know, sometimes when a dealer says, you know what, I don't have the time during the day, even though let's say they do have the time, you got to merge to that. cannot, we learned, I learned personally that you cannot, there are certain things you can do with a car dealer.
Vanja Terzic (29:11)
And that's what I'm saying. It's wrong. It's totally fucking wrong.
Eli Mishal (29:31)
You can tell them, okay, you should do this, you should do that. But it is end up in the end of the day, like after you hang up the phone call, it's gonna be up to them what they're gonna decide to do and what's not. And in the end of the day, no matter what you're gonna say and I'm gonna say in here, the instinct will just happen all the time. And that's just natural to happen. It's just a cultural thing. They're very much focusing on like buying cars and selling them. They don't care about what's happening around that business.
Vanja Terzic (29:52)
Sure, sure, sure, I get it, I
get it, and I'm not talking to you, I'm talking to the dealer. I'm talking to the dealer and I'm saying, if you want to compete moving forward, you need to find a time to look at the shit that matters the most. You have to find the time.
Eli Mishal (30:04)
I get it, I get it, but you can't. yes, Vanja Vanja, I gotta
tell you something. You have to understand that over the course of the last 13 years, I've learned that the hard way. There's no way, there's no way to educate those people when it comes to certain things and you just need to accept it. And so I end up saying, you know what?
I'm not gonna talk to dealers. I'm not gonna say, know what, we should do this, we should do that, or you should do this, you should do that. No, listen, you don't wanna do it, that's fine. You know what, leave it for me, okay? And that's how we came up and say, you know what, we need to create reports. The AI reports are very much like our advantage reports that comes to you your way every week, very much brings all the information to your end.
And it not just tells you like where you're selling the most amount of cars, but on top of that, which is the most important thing, is like giving you kind of pinpoints and ideas on what you should do in terms of like where you should put your money into. Like it's giving you suggestions, true real suggestions, telling you you should take some of your money from that channel and move it to that channel to that degree. And that changes the way you're
very much right near dealership without again going back into those like heavy duty UIs and trying to understand them and trying to analyze them. And so you know what, I'm gonna call today, later today to cars.com and I'm gonna cancel them because you know what, I'm tired of it, blah, blah, blah. Dealers don't have that kind of understanding. And that's something that we have to take control of. We have to make sure that we're bringing it to their attention without them doing
Vanja Terzic (31:45)
Mm-hmm.
But that's something they can already see in the system. Like if you go in our system right now, ⁓ and this is what I keep saying. As a dealer, if you're not willing to understand your core cost per qualified.
Eli Mishal (31:59)
Any analysis.
sure, but people don't go to those panels. Yeah.
And they will never be willing.
want to make it very clear to you. They will never be willing. They're not going to change their way of being. That's just car dealers. That's the way they are. No offense on anybody, you know.
Vanja Terzic (32:24)
I have
faith, I got faith that people change with time.
Eli Mishal (32:27)
I'm telling you like
it's, we're talking about like a very small segments of percentage, which is like, we're talking about like maybe 3 % of car dealers, like GMs or, you know, you know, people who owners of car dealership, like, you know, Indies that are actually really care about their money to that extent. And they might even end up switching and moving their, you know, third parties over the course of certain amount of time.
to see what they're gonna end up getting from each one. And that's how they end up like, okay, you know what? This has been working for me better. This has been working for me. But they're working based on their feeling. And the feeling in today's world does not work because there's so many moving parts and you cannot truly go to a lead, say, hey, where did you come from? For example, you know, it's just nearly impossible to do that with people who just call you and ask you for availability.
Vanja Terzic (33:19)
That's right. That's another issue.
Right, right. Because now we're getting so let's go a little deeper on this for the dealers that are that one. Go a little deeper on it is attribution. So attribution seems to be one of the core. mean, for us attributions been very and what is that very important? What is attribution attribution states that? How do you attribute where the deal?
came from, not necessarily where the lead came from, because a lead can come from multiple sources, that it can come from car gurus, and then they can go to your website. And then two weeks later, they can go to Craigslist. And then three days later, they can get coming from Facebook. So this is something that we're tracking, and we track the order of these things, right? So let's talk about attribution for a second and why that's important. And where do you really attribute the deal? Right? Because ultimately, I think what matters most is
Eli Mishal (33:50)
That's right.
Absolutely. ⁓
That's right.
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Vanja Terzic (34:14)
Which platform brings you the most amount of closed deals? But the chances are chances are that I mean, some people are going to say, no, it's about qualified leads. It's up to my salespeople. Yes, I get it. But if you look at it annually, it's always going to be on which platform brings you the most amount of ROI. So how do we how do we look at this attribution? Because there's different ways to look at this attribution. Right. So if I have a lead that comes in from four four different channels and four channels, different
Eli Mishal (34:18)
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
Vanja Terzic (34:43)
Let's say all within two weeks Who should get that credit?
Eli Mishal (34:49)
Well, the most recent one, the one that's been triggering the most recent. We do actually not like any other company. We're very unique when it comes to the tracking side of things. We're not just tracking phone numbers, we're tracking even websites too. So let's say if, for example, someone came into your website, either you're using our website or you're using another site, we're...
Vanja Terzic (34:54)
Mm-hmm.
Eli Mishal (35:14)
plugging in a widget on your site in which gives us the power to track, this lead came from, let's say, again, CarGurus, for example. And so as soon as they submitting either a finance application or they trying to call you, the phone number on the site will switch to that specific phone number of CarGurus. which at that moment of time, I don't need to ask that lead or where it came from. I already know right off the bat.
Vanja Terzic (35:22)
Mm-hmm.
Sure. So, Yeah, I mean, Makes sense unless. Yeah, I guess it's always going to make sense that way, right? Whoever brought in the last lead gets the credit. ⁓ But what if the customer, I guess it doesn't matter, right? What if the customer was wasn't ready? I mean, there's so many different variables. Maybe it doesn't need to be that that forensic because.
Eli Mishal (35:57)
That's right.
Yeah,
we don't need to go that forensic to the numbers.
Vanja Terzic (36:08)
You can't look at it on a weekly
basis. You really have to have enough data in order to say, okay, this works and...
Eli Mishal (36:15)
Correct. Yeah, we always, we always
encouraging people to say, you know what, when you start with us, we're giving you a starting kind of point where you're like, okay, we start tracking and within two to three months, then we're like, okay, this, what has been working for you the most, this is what you should be avoiding, maybe even canceling, you know, and saving thousands of dollars over the course of a year or two or God knows how long.
and just pour it into where it works. Because that's very much what it comes down to in the end.
Vanja Terzic (36:46)
Mm-hmm.
Yep.
Yeah. Yeah. I agree.
Eli Mishal (36:53)
So,
just to summarize this, I think that we are at a point in our software company perspective that we stopped trying to educate people. We're just literally giving you the meal prepped and everything and you just need to eat it very much. And it's up to you to decide either you would like to call that third party and say, know what, I would like to cancel.
Vanja Terzic (37:02)
Mm-hmm.
Eli Mishal (37:18)
and or not, but I think I think it makes the decision making much more easier to decide, you know what, let's go in this direction. Let's go in this direction in terms of budgeting, you know, or maybe canceling again.
Vanja Terzic (37:28)
Well,
now it does. Now it does. If we go, let's go let's go back a year or let's go back two years. Let's go. Let's go back six months. I remember like, let's say I get 500 leads a month from from any one of these channels. I'm asking myself, is the channel not working? Or are my people dropping the ball? Because you can have both happen quite often. Right? Because
Eli Mishal (37:33)
Correct.
Vanja Terzic (37:55)
Right today, people spend I don't know, 11, 11 hours online researching like I read this that the other day 11 people spend 11 hours online researching and visit 1.5 dealerships. Okay, so during the research process, yes, they're researching, but they're also texting and they might be calling. So if the ball is dropped in that initial state, it's not the it's not the channels fault. It's the reps fault.
Eli Mishal (38:23)
No.
Yes.
Vanja Terzic (38:25)
So,
and that can create a whole mixed transparency and mixed signals with your cost per lead acquisition or your cost per sale per channel. And maybe that's one of the reasons why people haven't looked at it because it's super dynamic, right? But now that there is AI, that AI will handle the initial response to get that interest to connect with a sales rep, right? Now there's no more excuses. There's no more excuses, right?
Eli Mishal (38:48)
Well, I think there's a lot of points
to that, but it again comes down back to only one single point, which is like a car dealer would not make a decision because to begin with, he's never gonna go and try to look into those numbers because he doesn't care. He just literally don't care. what we do different here is we're literally taking all the data
we're putting it together in such an easy way to make much better decisions. And those decisions will affect any car dealer. Like I remember back in the day that when we started this company, we helped many people just by integrating that phone tracking capabilities when it comes to texting and phone call recording. And so we are signing
different phone numbers, right, to different third party sites, which again allows us to do the tracking, you know? But, you know, we still end up going back to that dealer saying, hey, you know, this is what you're getting from this, this is what you're getting from that. Like we had to actually go after the dealer and tell them and encourage them in a way, like tell them, okay, this is what you're doing. That's what you're getting from here. It just goes back to that educational thing.
over and over again, like, you know what, let me put this one on the table. And it's a big one. It's a big elephant in the room. We started this business thinking, you know what, we need to do, I don't know if call it coaching, but it was more of like, let's called, you know, every dealer once a week and try to talk to them and try to educate them, try to help them as much as we can. They don't care. They literally don't care.
Vanja Terzic (40:30)
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Eli Mishal (40:32)
And
I think the reason why they don't care is because just the way they're conducting and running their dealership. And again, you know what? We don't intend to change it. I don't think we should try to change that.
Vanja Terzic (40:38)
Well, ⁓ I think
I think dealers were very thankful for it. I think they genuinely they were they cared a lot about the act of it. But there was no implementation. There was no action. And it's it's the action part that's that's a little bit difficult. And, sometimes, I mean, let's face it, understandably so there's so many different hats to wear in a dealership when, you know, if you don't have different departments that
Eli Mishal (40:47)
Some.
Vanja Terzic (41:06)
it's hard, it's hard to be really good at all of these different things. you know, thank God for data and AI and everything that we're able to build in order to create very easy and direct and actionable tasks that make a huge difference, not a lot of tasks that make a little difference. You know, and I think that's the goal because people are just, they're tired of not knowing. It's very hard to act when you don't know.
Eli Mishal (41:21)
Absolutely.
Vanja Terzic (41:34)
It's very hard to commit yourself and say, okay, I'm going to make these changes and I'm going to do this and I'm going to do that. If the data that you're getting is not accurate in the first place, because there's a lot of guesswork, you know, and then you go to a marketing agency who are the gurus of gurus, right? And you don't get results and you don't want to do that again. We, how many times did we see this with Craigslist? How many times the dealers, they said, try Craigslist. I mean, this is going back, you know, year or two years, five years. I don't know. They go, try Craigslist. didn't work.
Eli Mishal (41:43)
Absolutely. Yeah.
That's right.
so many times.
Vanja Terzic (42:05)
Right? Remember that and we tried Craigslist again and they're like, wow, Craigslist is great again. No, it's not that it's that you were doing it wrong. So if you're not going to get it done, right, don't do it at all. And you can't get it done right unless you have easy to understand data that tells you if you're on the right path or if you're on the wrong path. It's that right. Don't trust the gurus, trust the numbers and trust the data is what I'm saying.
Eli Mishal (42:05)
Yeah.
Correct. Yeah.
That's right. Yeah, absolutely. You're trying to make it sound like a commercial, but you shouldn't. It's very much like it. know, the numbers are in front of you. you know, again, I don't think that we should ever try to educate people in that sense. And the reason is because by nature, they're just not thinking that way. And so we shouldn't be trying to change it. Yeah.
Vanja Terzic (42:50)
No, no, they're thinking their own way. Everyone thinks their own way. They're going to make those decisions
based on how they run their business. And that's totally okay. That's what makes everybody unique.
Eli Mishal (42:57)
No, no, no, no, no.
What we're doing is different. What we're doing is we're actually taking all this data and making a sum and like, it is. You do whatever you want to do with that. You know, and that makes, again, decision making much easier. You know, and that's that's kind of like the goal of it. That's what we're trying to do in here for so long. And it's not just with tracking, speaking of, you know, it's with everything. I think AI in general will come to that kind of
point where you can make better decisions, sometimes even on demand, know, like on a phone call level, you know, and, and we spoke about that, we're probably going to talk about another time, but that's, that's a very much crucial thing for a car dealership because car dealer, either your French or Indy, you're still making hard decisions sometimes, you know, you still gonna say, you know what, let me cancel this, let me
get this, let me do this, all kinds of different things. You're gonna change, you're gonna switch, you're gonna swing, and there's nothing wrong about it. But when it comes to getting you the data, getting you the information that is actually super viable, then you can do something with that and your decisions will be 10x better in every single way.
Vanja Terzic (44:15)
Because you guys are
driven by data, not gut feeling. Right. I if you're, if you're, look, if you're on it, if you're in an auction block and you're making a gut feeling purchase.
Eli Mishal (44:18)
Correct. And that's what we're trying to figure here. Yeah.
That's the worst.
Vanja Terzic (44:27)
No, not always though. you look, no, let's be honest. If you've all we all have, you all have. But but on some lot of situations, I've never made more money in my life on units that I made as an impulse gut decision. No, I don't call it lucky because if well, y'all call it payday. You call it lucky. But if you've done something often enough,
Eli Mishal (44:29)
Trust me, in many cases, you know, I end up with the car with the bed transmission and the bed engine when it was as easy, you know.
Sure. Sure, but I can call it lucky.
I can call it lucky. I'll leave it for myself to say you're lucky at that moment of time.
Vanja Terzic (44:56)
Right? That gut feeling is important. If you haven't done something often enough, that gut feeling doesn't mean anything. Right? So the only way you can make ⁓ a good decision, a smart decision is by leveraging data that's served to you and say, hey, here you go. What do you want to do? That's it. That's it.
Eli Mishal (45:10)
That's right. Absolutely. Yeah.
Yeah. And just getting that data and really don't have to understand it. Just need to act on it because that's like where we're summarizing everything to you. So it's easy to digest because if I ask you to go to the gym, for example, starting from today, you might say, wait a second. I'm not ready. I'm not perped. need my mental to be ready and this and that and all this.
Vanja Terzic (45:19)
Yep. Yep.
Right. Exactly. Exactly.
Eli Mishal (45:39)
different algorithms in your life that needs to align to get you to go to the gym. And I think that you're right, but a very good point that most car dealers, and we haven't said that in this discussion, but we should have right at the beginning, is that they're using their gut feeling to make decisions. And that's a very bad mechanism. I'm sorry. I think on everything. If you have data,
Vanja Terzic (45:59)
Not on everything, but not on everything, not on everything.
Eli Mishal (46:06)
and you have a feeling, which one should you select? Obviously, always with the data, right? Always. Of course. There's no question about it. Data always wins over feeling because it's just and that's what you should do. Listen, I understand a lot of dealers who runs their dealership, okay? And they're buying
Vanja Terzic (46:10)
Mm-hmm.
Yes, I agree with that.
Eli Mishal (46:33)
you brought a kind of very good topic like buying based on feeling. Sure, mean, sometimes you, yeah, sure, you're to make really good money by going with your gut feeling and say, you know what, fuck it, let's just buy it. But it's just that business as a whole, you can't treat it like that. You can treat certain things, but you just can't treat your dealership based on gut feeling. You know what mean?
Vanja Terzic (46:53)
I get it.
Sure, sure, but there's
a lot of data. There's a lot of, look, what about, what happens when you hire people, right? What happens when, you have to use your gut, right? Our gut is what makes us all unique and different and special or crazy in a way.
Eli Mishal (47:04)
You gotta give it a try. Yeah, you gotta give them a try. Sure, have to. Yeah. There's always like a theory and
practice. A theory or practice you have to separate the two. But when it comes to your marketing again, it must be focusing on the data because the data is there. It's not like it's not there and you have to use God feeling. But if there is data, why would you use a God feeling?
Vanja Terzic (47:26)
That's okay. So that's what we're getting to.
Eli Mishal (47:32)
That makes no sense. Well, back in the day, sure.
Vanja Terzic (47:32)
But people have had to use gut feeling because the data data
not back in the day, even a year ago, even even six months ago, and some people still today. It is true. I'll tell you why. Because they have the data, but it's done. That's not no, they have the data. It's the wrong data. The data is not accurate. We're talking about what do mean it's not true?
Eli Mishal (47:40)
It's not true. It is not true. We've done phone tracking for so many years. Yes.
It's not
true because we've been doing tracking since we did our phone systems ⁓ back in 2017 and that's many years now that we are having pretty good accurate data that kind of suits your understanding. The fact that you didn't take it as a dealer and say, okay, let me break it down. Let me look at it. Let me review it once every two months or whatever and make better decisions over my marketing expense.
Vanja Terzic (47:58)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Correct? Correct.
Eli Mishal (48:18)
That's something that most card dealers didn't do, sure,
even though they're using our software. But that doesn't mean that it wasn't exist. It is exist 100 % during this entire period of time. Just people didn't do anything with that.
Vanja Terzic (48:23)
which makes the data inaccurate.
Sure, sure, sure. if
the dealer doesn't go in and selects, here's the channels, I mean, it shows you which channels you're using to advertise. And if the dealer doesn't go in there and putting their cost per those channels, we're not fortune tellers. We don't know what your cost per lead is. So if that data is not there, they've relied on gut, right? So when it comes to gut feeling, you know, I can have all the data in the world in order to pick up a car at auction or pick up a car on the street, but I still have to go off.
Eli Mishal (48:36)
Sure, that's right.
Vanja Terzic (48:56)
gut feeling, is my past experience or hopes of the future, which is telling me maybe I should or shouldn't have this car on the lot. You know, like am I going to put a I'm going to put a Bentley and Spokane in Washington that's a, you know, GTC convertible? Probably not, you know, so there's a gut feeling to play that. I guess what we're trying to get to is if you can replace gut feeling with crystal clear actionable data, it's going to make you more money.
Eli Mishal (49:12)
Probably not.
Vanja Terzic (49:25)
Fact. That's it. Nothing more. Nothing more.
Eli Mishal (49:26)
Absolutely. Yeah, that's very much it. That's what it comes down to. I think that in the end, we are encouraging people to forget about trying to educate them, forget about trying to like teach them what's right, what's wrong, how to do, when to do. We brought an AI reports on your marketing channels, which can give you that insight at the glance. So you don't have to again
go dive deep into too much numbers and too much worried stuff that you shouldn't be worried about in a way. And that's one of the things that we're doing differently today that we did in the past. And that makes a difference in many ways.
Vanja Terzic (49:53)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah,
and the you know, the the best teacher is the market, the market, the market is the best teacher. So if somebody doesn't want to do this today, it's okay. The market will teach you to do it when when you have to do it. Otherwise, there's going to be consequences for all of us for all of us, not just you know, small, midsize car dealers, software companies, everybody else, you know, and that is to stay in line with the needs of the market, which are always
Eli Mishal (50:11)
Absolutely. ⁓
That's right.
Vanja Terzic (50:36)
changing.