218 - What Your Opt-Outs Reveal: Your CRM Isn't Broken. It's Being Misused

0:00Hello, welcome! Glad to be with you today. It is Wednesday, so excited for Webinar Wednesday, coming to you live from the road. I'm in Eugene, Oregon, here at Brian Slater's shop in Eugene, Oregon. This is the North Eugene Auto Repair, Auto Repair in, uh, in Eugene. And so coming to you from the road. Thank you, Brian, appreciate you letting me use your office today as we're out and about visiting shops.

0:26It's Just an awesome, awesome, gorgeous weather here in northern— northern— no, no, I was gonna say northern Utah. I'm not in northern Utah. I'm in Eugene, Oregon, and this is not northern Utah, but it is gorgeous weather. So if you don't have gorgeous weather where you are, you wish you were here. We're gonna have a great conversation today. Those of you who have comments, questions, comments, put them into the chat section.

0:51That chat section comments allows us to Have this conversation back and forth. I will be the voice for you. You've got questions, comments, concerns for our guest. Want to make sure that those are voiced for you. Put them in the comments section. My guest with us today is ever-present, ever-linguist, Mr. Craig O'Neill of AutoFlow. Craig, how the heck are you, brother? I'm really good, Jimmy.

1:20Really good. I was actually thinking northern Utah as you mentioned Utah, even though it was Oregon. Both places are beautiful. I can't blame you for the distinction. Issue there. That was— that's all right. Yeah, yeah, no, it is absolutely gorgeous up here. Now I will tell you that there is a large lack of mountains in Eugene, Oregon that northern Utah does have, is, uh, bounteous mountains.

1:43Yeah, yeah, I can't wait. Ogden, a couple, uh, well, next month, next month now is October. Yes, October for the Mars Conference. Yep. Yes, yes. Speaking of MARS Conferences, uh, we're going to put up a QR code for the MARS Conference. If you scan this QR code, it will get you right onto our registration page. And those sticking around to the very end, there is this very special, very unique offer for anybody who wants to attend the MARS Conference.

2:11So stick around, scan the QR code, save that in your smartphones. We are going to have a great conversation about marketing. Craig is one of our presenters at the MARS Conference. And super excited for Craig to be here. And Craig and I have known each other for a couple of years now and worked together at a couple of companies, and glad that we are able to still be friends here in this wonderful industry that we call home.

2:37Craig, what are we talking about today? Well, Jimmy, this is the one of my favorite topics to, to go into. We're talking about CRM systems, of course. Uh, now I, I have some opinions about CRM systems. Both of us come from a background that deals in these systems. You have opinions as well, and you have some observations. And my observation is simply, simply this: the systems themselves are capable of some pretty cool things.

3:02Yeah, but we aren't using them very well. The— it's, it's not broken, they're being misused, is the title of our conversation today. Your CRM isn't broken, it's being misused. And I don't like to walk into a conversation with like, oh, you're doing something wrong. Or on the opposite side of it, I don't like to walk into a conversation like, well, you guys are doing it right, you're just fine, but other people are doing it like— I, I've used stuff wrong.

3:32I've made mistakes in how I leverage the different systems and tools that are available. And I, I just believe, and I hope you just go along with us today there might be a better way than our way that we're approaching it now. And be open to that. Yeah, be open to it, because what they're— what you as a shop may be doing today is working, right?

3:54Yeah, it's not even a debate. Like, it is getting results of a certain level and type that are appearing to be adequate. Adequate for today. And hopefully with this conversation that you and I are going to have as we talk about the customer relationship management software, hopefully there's something we can expose shops to that might say, hey, maybe there is a different way of doing this.

4:21Yeah. So what are these ways? What are the 5 mistakes that shops make the most? Or not the mistakes. What— how can we help these shops improve? Hurdles that we have to get over, right? It's an opportunity for us to make it better. It's an opportunity to make it better. This is what it is. It's not a mistake. You're not doing it wrong.

4:42Consider this. Yeah, we're going to talk about a lot of things on this. And I think before we even get into those hurdles, let's talk about the nature of communication today, people's attention span today, because I think that there's a couple of different things that we need to understand. And first off, let's talk about why we even want to leverage a CRM system.

5:01And for many shops, you have a sustainable sort of automatic practice here. But when you're a busy shop, you feel very successful. And then all of a sudden, things are not as busy as they are. This happens to all of us all the time. The shop, Jimmy, our transmission shop, family business that I came down into, uh, grew up in, and like, we never had a slow spell.

5:24The shops around us always had those little slow spells. We're like, yeah, we don't. And that was a good feeling until it happened to us too. So we're all vulnerable to it. And the knee-jerk reaction that I see is, is, is this: people eventually hit that slow spell, they check to see if other people are experiencing it too. We comfort ourselves with the fact that others are doing it, defining it as a market-wide symptom of broader events that we have no control over.

5:49And so then we can just comfort ourselves with another idea. It's like, ah, it'll come back around. And I heard this over and over and over again from my family, who is owner of the business, my dad and my grandpa because that has been the experience. It always comes back around. Why would we ever be okay with the fact that a slow spell also technically always comes back around?

6:15And if our knee-jerk reaction to those moments is then to go into a degree of marketing or a degree of follow-up or a mass blast text strategy like I see a lot of people fall into, it's like, huh, the work needs to be drummed up. We'll turn to our CRM system, we'll construct the perfect message and send it out, and then people will make appointments and fill our bays.

6:37Sound familiar? Oh, it does, it does. And if we know those, those times are going to come back around because it's cyclical, what are we doing? We— it is preventable. What are we doing that we can prevent this from happening and being that cyclical item? Well, this is— this goes straight into it because what, what I see people doing with the knee-jerk response is they're actually crippling their ability to handle the cycles of this.

7:04When you do a knee-jerk text blast response, what's the number one reaction that you get to it every single time? Opt-outs. They are the most common reaction to this. And that's what I— if you go on the socials and you look on comment threads of shop owners experiencing a slow spell, they're asking each other like, what's the perfect message that you can type out that gets fewer opt-outs and more points?

7:28There isn't one. There is no perfect message that gets X number of people. The ratio will never be the same in 2 demographics with unique people being the customers or clients in every one of the unique repair facilities that we have. There is no perfect message. No, they're not. They're looking for that silver bullet, correct? Yes, it's— this silver bullet is, is the right term for this.

7:49And I discussed this on my podcast, uh, in an early episode of the podcast, uh, Speak Up: Effective Communication on the Automotive Repair Podcast Network. Uh, it was episode 14. Uh, I said what your opt-outs are really telling you, and I think that what they are telling us is something we need to listen to. So now on that, let's move into the attention span of the people in the world today versus the past.

8:13And Jimmy, I love to read. I love, uh, like deep thoughts. We're gonna get philosophical for a second. I know you don't mind. We love this. Yeah, let's go. Uh, Signature Classics, C.S. Lewis, one of my favorites, Screwtape Letters. In the early chapters in that book, it's, it's describing— I won't go into the details of Screwtape Letters, but the way that you distract someone if you're trying to distract them from serious thoughts in C.S.

8:38Lewis's time period was, and I'll quote here from the book, uh, that got the guy to think he was hungry. And then I showed him a newsboy shouting the midday paper and the number 73 bus going past, and before he reached the bottom of the steps, I had him into an unalterable conviction that whatever odd ideas might come into the man's head when he was shut up alone with his books, a healthy dose of real life— which he meant by the bus and the newsboy— was enough to show him that all that sort of thing just couldn't be true.

9:06He knew he had a narrow escape, and then years later was fond of talking about it. I'll skip ahead. But thanks to the process which we set at work in them centuries ago, they find it all but impossible to believe in the unfamiliar while the familiar is before their eyes. Uh, so this is hard to digest. Because it's C.S. Lewis. It's like a tough piece of wonderful, awesome, the best flavor steak in the world that you got to chew on a whole lot of times before you can actually get to digesting it.

9:29But the point is, C.S. Lewis's era, the distraction was you wanted to get them into this stream of events. And that's— your business is to fix his attention on the stream, teach it to call it real life, and don't let him ask what it means by real. And that stream is exactly what people are having today. This is a word used by C.S.

9:50Lewis before streaming, like we are on a webinar, streaming across the web even existed. What distracted a man? Just being on the street with a bus and a newsboy shouting. That's yesterday. That's 1940s, uh, United Kingdom actually, in C.S. Lewis' time. Let's fast forward. Johann Hari's book Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention, How to Think Deeply Again absolutely nails the same point.

10:15In the modern age and puts a name to it with this term called this frenetic digital interruption. And he says, is pulling our attention away from our thoughts and suppressing your default mode network. Cool term. I think we're almost in this constant stimulus-driven, stimulus-bound environment moving from one distraction to the next. And if you don't remove yourself from that, it will suppress whatever train of thought you had.

10:38And I think that frenetic digital distraction really, it's just we have to acknowledge this is the reality we're in today, and there's people that are struggling with notifications and attention and bombarded with media messages. Every news article you read has the pop-up ads. Are we, uh, in that same zone like C.S. Lewis where a newsboy and the sign on a bus is the only thing that could distract our attention?

11:03No, we are under a constant 24/7 assault for our attention span today. That's where we're communicating from. And when your shop gets a little slow and you decide you're gonna have a knee-jerk reaction to the slowness and you expect a message to land that leads to action with a population that's drowning in this reality, would it be any surprise that it only sees marginal results?

11:31Is there any irony that it is called streaming? Is there any irony that it's called a Real, dude. Jimmy, it's like the oldest problems are always like resurfaced again in our lifetimes today with different technology. Oh, it's totally different. And now it's 17-second blurbs about— it's a 7-second commercial, it's a 17-second commercial. We're being bombarded with this instant stimuli to totally distract us from what is actually real.

12:04Yes. And consequential. And you're being bombarded by things that are momentary blurps of endorphins. Yeah. It's a temporary— competing with that tendency to escape with these things. You're spot on. This topic is why I lead into these 5 barriers that are causing us— like the things that we're misusing in our CRMs. Right. I consider them barriers or hurdles because we can get get over them and we can decide to leverage it right.

12:37And number one, and we have a slide for this, so I put it up there. I know some people like to read and some people can listen. I wanted to put this quote on there because— and I'm going to— fatal sin of speakers. I'm going to read the quote. I know it's on the slide, but I know some of you can't see it and I know some of you are only listening.

12:55Yes. Oh, Jimmy, I'm sorry. Too small. Oh, that's okay. That's why I'm here. Yeah. So it's a big meaty slide. Problem number one, though, is we're not communicating to people on what matters to them. That's the problem. And to reference this point, a great read, and please write this down, pick up this book, How to Win Friends and Influence People in the Digital Age.

13:17And if you're interested in this topic at all, read that book. It's from Dale Carnegie and Associates, so updated for the digital age. There's so many profoundly good things in this. And this is a quote I pulled straight from the book, and I want to make sure it gets its proper reference there, but it says, when it comes to mattering to others, you must discuss what matters to them.

13:36Assume all else will fall on deaf or in this case, dull ears. This is an interesting principle to consider, given the spirit in which the vast majority of people are communicating today. Most messages are primarily meant to educate others about our lives, our products, to reveal compelling portions of ourselves. We think others would be attracted 2, while this appears to be an assertive strategy, it is actually a passive strategy in that it requires others to connect with us.

14:06The trouble is that's marketing monologue, not relational dialogue. It's assumption, not assimilation. When assumption guides our efforts to befriend or influence others, the results end up on the wrong side of memorable. OK. End quote. That is, that's another, like, I'm giving you solid food to digest today. That's, that's, we don't have time to go this layer of depth in our presentation at MARS.

14:36So that's why I'm really happy to have this conversation today. It's a primer. If you walk in primed with some of these thoughts, you're going to be able to get a lot more out of it. But here's where I go with this. We are communicating from a position of our interests most of the time in the auto repair shop. When it slows down, we're interested in filling our bay.

14:56If we were really interested in having those customers come in, we would have done the harder work of relating and documenting and managing the data, all sorts of things differently, to have a sustained conversation that they understood the value in, because we understand what's important to them. And that's a whole different thing, and that's going to come up again as we move into these, these other hurdles.

15:16But I think that that's the thing first and foremost. Remember, What messages right now are you pushing out there that are not memorable? I didn't give this in the slide, but I have an example recently, Jimmy. Uh, very recently I turned 43, uh, earlier in August, and, uh, I'm not on social media these days. The one thing that was kind of fun is getting all those birthday harvests.

15:38You know how you get all the happy birthday things? It's actually a lot of work. Then you got to go like everything and all that stuff too, but Don't worry, I don't miss that entirely because I have been a patron in local businesses that have CRM systems in my neighborhood, chiefly my, my Subaru dealership where we have a vehicle lease presently. And I got 3 happy birthday emails from 3 separate people in that organization.

16:042 of them were identical emails automatically constructed. And there was a neat little quote in the bottom of one of those emails that actually said, This email is automatically generated and we do not monitor replies to it. Oh my God, that's— but it was a beautiful picture of balloons with the branding of that dealership on it. Oh, it was touching. It was such a great birthday blessing to receive that on Sunday afternoon.

16:32Had it been from an actual person and not an automated system would have made it even better. But sure, but does the birthday greeting from a business actually land on the memorable side of communication, or is it a cheap and simple automated gimmick to feign that you care with a direct interest that is more for the business's benefit rather than it is for my birthday, right?

16:58Congratulations, you captured my birth date in a data field in a system that is automated to generate a joy, I guess, because I, I don't unsubscribe because I love these examples. It really was a gift for me that I get to use and communicate from. Yeah, yeah, that's good. That's good. But no, this is a common thing and we've, we've seen the strategy.

17:22You and I have been in the CRM space for a while and you've seen that like given as a best practice. We want to capture, capture the, you know, birth date and month, not the year, birth date and month. And then you can have these sort of birthday messages go out. All right. Maybe you have that strategy applied in your shop. Is that a wrongness?

17:37No. Maybe some people really appreciate it. I think a lot of people don't give it a second thought. And that's the majority. They probably don't, but they also aren't sending it from an email that is not being monitored and not going to reply. Let's hope not. Because if Jimmy Super Shop were to send you a happy birthday message, it would purely be a happy birthday message.

17:59There's no other ulterior motives whatsoever. Yeah. And you would reply and say, oh, thank you so much, Jimmy Super Shop. We would reply again to say— I would hope so. Yeah. Now, my experience in birthdays are one thing, but all sorts of messages. I know when CRM automation occurs, and I'll touch on this at Mars a little bit further, uh, the team is not engaged in that part of the process, and it's difficult for them to engage in the inbound compensation.

18:25Yeah. Yep. There's a loss of continuity there. So I, I do feel a lot of times there's automated things going out from a shop, but there is actually no behavior that is being encouraged or directed or accountable, any accountability layer for the team to be a participant in that. So it does play in that. But this goes to number 2, which I think is at the root of the whole problem.

18:47And this is, again, another quote from Dale Carnegie and Associates. First off, problem number 2, we're not cultivating a community. And this principle comes for me from my study in this book. And as I was reading that book, assessing how shops are leveraging CRMs, this stuck out. And it says, and I quote, often forgotten is the long-term plan. Businesses call it a customer retention strategy, but it is best thought of as a lively, meaningful dialogue among a community of friends.

19:16If the foundation of all long-term success is the establishment of trust-based relationships, then the goal of all interactions should be to convey value as soon and as often as possible. Not just birthdays. Not just birthdays as a data field. What's meaningful for a client in a repair shop? What's meaningful to them in a repair shop? What is the purpose in our community and how are you articulating the value of staying in touch so we can continue to express what this purpose is and how it benefits you?

19:51And by the way, Mr. Client, it's very important. Save this number in your phone so that you recognize that we are a contact because you can reach out to us here and we're going to be here if you have any questions. And that's starting to get to the sense of community here. And Jimmy, this is getting more important in today's world. Here's a tip for y'all right now.

20:10I want you to open up your phone, go to your text message app, look at the spam folder. How many messages do you have in the spam folder of your messages app, whether you're using Android or Apple, does not matter. Automatically, messages are going straight to those folders with default settings from the phone's operating system and device. There's a bunch in there, and a lot of it probably is spam, correct, Jimmy?

20:33Oh, I'm pretty sure all of it's spam. A lot of times it's very accurate in mine. I, I've only on occasion seen one or two messages in there. Here's how your shop is going to land in the spam folder: if the client never accepts you as a contact and never engages in the dialogue with you in text. Yep. And so the manifestation of this, and I've started to see more of this recently, very recently, just this summer, uh, people sending a DVI link to their client, for example, but the client claims they never got it.

21:02Yeah, but they do receive messages without the link, went to the spam folder, because sometimes those links are just being interpreted when it's not saved as a contact. The solution is get it saved as a contact. Interesting little issue, but that takes a little effort, doesn't it, to keep your client to add you as the contact. There's some cool tools to do that, simple QR code scans and lots of things we can do at the counter to help people through this problem.

21:24But we need our advisors to express the importance of the communication and why they should want it before they'll ever accept it as a contact. That's right. Yeah. So interesting, right? So I think that cultivation of a community, that's the easy entry point. Help them understand the value of the communication that's coming and why we're going to be reaching you and make sure they actually do want it.

21:45And that leads perfectly into hurdle number 3. Hurdle number 3 is we are not gaining an opt-in for the purpose we seek. And Jimmy, you know this is true across the board generally for opt-ins and shop capturing, and we're gonna talk just a minute about this here as well. We'll do this after the next point. The next point is a strong one on this, but you want the customer to want the message from you.

22:11Does that happen automatically, that they understand what you're going to be sending them and why you're going to be sending it? Not unless you explain it. Not unless you explain it. What's the value in it for them? Why is there a benefit for them to be on a list in your shop for a certain type of message? I used an example earlier about text blast when it gets slow, and the mistake I see the most, Jimmy, is that shops literally like have their all or repeat customer list and they just hit this whole list with this message like, hey, we're slow, come in.

22:45What if— what if it's— just go with me here. What if you created a list that people could sign up and subscribe to in your shop? It's like, hey, if you want to join our slow day list, there's a couple advantages of this. If you want to just, uh, you have a few lingering maintenance items type of a thing and we have openings, we have a— maybe there's a promotion rate, or maybe it's just literally we can get you in and out because we know time is important and we're not a discount culture anymore here, right?

23:09So maybe we express the speed of service. Like, we know it's inconvenient to have the car down when it's quiet like this. We'll have loaners or rides available, like whatever. There's benefits for you signing up on this list so you can gain access to this thing that we're going to do to make it better for you. Would you like to be on that list?

23:25We maybe send 1 or 2 of these out a quarter, and perfect, right? And they sign up for this. Now you've got a warm lead list of people who are, are ready to fill your bays. When they need filling. How hard would it be to create that? Oh, not very hard. And I want to rename it already. I want to call it the VIP available spots.

23:45Perfect. Yes, yes. All sorts of things that you could do. Yeah, you could call your membership list. I mean, whatever, you go crazy, have fun with it, communicate the value of it. And yeah, you have some— my wife does this at art shows. She sells her art in these art shows, and she's found that even just the placement of this sign-up form matters.

24:05Like when it's front and center, people who are waiting in line for the checkout now are able to sign into that book while they're waiting for their turn to check out with the art and gets way more signups for her email list. Love it. It's, it's perfect. Yeah. And similar practices are totally possible still today. But what do shops do? We automatically assume everyone wants to get any type of message we want to have for any purpose, and we never clarify or distinguish any special type of thing.

24:30And thus they never get the opt-in. And thus, what are your opt-outs telling you, man? That's their first chance to talk to you about their preference for the type of communication you have. And you know what happens in an opt-out, Jimmy? You know as well as I do, that number's blacklisted at the carrier level. Yep. That's hard to undo. Now you got to communicate to them about the value of re-engaging in that by texting the word start to this number.

24:53And that's a harder thing for a busy service advisor or customer service rep to be able to engage Yeah, that's true. It's true. Yeah, we've got to communicate with them on the level they want, in the form that they want. And sometimes those opt-outs are them saying, look, I just don't want to communicate in this method. Yeah, but what do they prefer?

25:14Yeah, what's the conversation? Where have you built the relationship to continue that conversation on their preferred platform? Yeah, look, I cooked myself on a long time ago doing demos of AutoFlow. With multiple instances. Now I get texts that I forget to clear out of their thing all the time. That like texting is not the best way to get me during the day.

25:34I am, however, in my inbox and I promise you, you have clients that that's the same thing for them too, or they don't even want to go with me here. What if we had a list of people who prefer a phone call follow-up, Jimmy? Oh, I love it. And there are people that that's what they would prefer. Yes, 100%. Yes. And if you don't get the buy-in from that group and you think everyone wants a phone call follow-up, uh, we, we already do this.

25:58You're wrong. This is shop, Jimmy. Yeah, you want to know, uh, in about 90 to 120 follow-up calls that we do, uh, in a week there— we, we have a gal doing this, uh, for us for Golden Rule Auto Care— uh, we get about 10 to 15% of those calls that go out end up with good connections, uh, like a good conversation.

26:19Oh, oh, oh, they actually answer the phone and have— actually answer the phone and have a conversation. Only 10 to 15% around 120 calls. Yeah, not a huge number. No, it's not, because people are busy and, uh, they don't want to be interrupted. And, uh, those that want the conversations, they're the ones that answer the phone. And the other 80, 85, 90% prefer a text message or an email or a Facebook message or Purely nothing at all.

26:49Thank you. Let me ask you this, Jimmy. You got it, man. And when you get a phone call today from a number that's not a contact in your phone, do you answer voicemail? No. Or screening? Yeah, I found the, uh, you push the 2 buttons on both sides, boop, right into voicemail. Done. Yeah, I, I have one of the call screener things on mine now.

27:08If it's not a contact, it hits that pretty much automatically. I don't answer my phone. I don't answer my phone. I then check to see the missed call, and if it is something important, I'll call it back. That's the world we're entering. And it's the same principle that we just discussed with that text message, that if they aren't a contact, same is true for the phone number that you're dialing from.

27:27If that hasn't yet been saved as a contact, look, guys, your call isn't going to be trusted yet. Area codes that are mine are the least trusted. Yeah. You know, that's the world now. And we have to be able to recognize that and combat that. But that involves becoming that contact, agreeing to that type of conversation, and maybe making a note somewhere in your management or CRM system about those preferred levels of contact.

27:57Yeah. Yeah, that's the hard work here. And I understand why shops that are low staff or only have 1 service advisor to 5 technicians and he's also the CSR and he handles payroll because he's also the owner and yeah, Yeah, that gets really tough really fast. And you have opportunity there when you're overwhelmed to hire someone else who can do these things.

28:18That's going to add value to your business. They'll be able to help cultivate these lists, which gets more retention, guarantees you have the income and the cash flow to be able to support their livelihood, and everything gets better. But the starting point is really tough. Problem number 4. Number 4, let's go. All right, this one's key. Mass blasts without express written permission are against the law.

28:40True. And this is the really, really bonkers part of this, is like shops are loosely aware of this and, and yet they do it anyway. I forget what the fine is right now, and I'm not a lawyer, I'm not giving legal advice, just disclaimer on that if you can put it in bold. Yeah, no, but I think it's like a $1,500 fine per offense, and if somebody knows that they did not expressly give you permission to text them very specifically.

29:11Yep, text is what we're talking about here. Uh, that's something they could sue you for and win every time. Notice a lot of the largest organizations out there with multiple locations do not engage in this method of follow-up because, you know, the target— they've lost multiple court cases Uh, Jiffy Lube is one that comes to mind. You can Google it. Court cases where Jiffy Lube had to pay out multi-million dollars because of their mass texting clients.

29:47And, and what makes it worse is that they were mass texting clients who had opted out. Oh, oh no. So they had a blacklist failure, which is even another thing. So yeah, this is where, okay, you vibe coders out there, I know you're out there and I know you're even playing with APIs from groups like Twilio, uh, and you might think like, Cool, we can do texting real easy.

30:07Guess what? Start managing your blacklist because Twilio sometimes doesn't do it properly for you. Yeah, and the carrier sometimes doesn't do it properly, and it is still you on the hook every time. And if you're giving your software platform to other people to use, your platform, unless it has clear terms and conditions, could also fall under some scrutiny. So, oh boy, it gets sticky.

30:30It does. It really is. So there's a difference between mass sending a marketing message versus pinpointing and being very specific. Oh, I'm glad you bring this up, Jimmy. Yeah, so we have a slide on this. So CRM permissions are not actually the same across the board, multiple channels. So you probably use terms like transactional versus promotional, Jimmy, I'm sure, but industry terms do vary from something, and our industry itself is not usually good at taking universal language Right, and carrying it forward.

31:03But these 3 categories of text messages, I put this out, this is, I don't have the source on here, but I pulled this source from online. Conversational, informational, promotional. I wanna draw your attention to that blue arrow on the screen. It's kind of a bluish-green arrow, Jimmy. It's on that 1, 2, 3, 3rd row down where it's talking about how that message is constructed.

31:27So like messages promoting a brand, a product, or a service, or anything that prompts a consumer to buy something, go somewhere, or otherwise take an action. That, if it's in that category, requires express written consent to be legal. Express written consent. Consumers may sign a form, check a box online, or otherwise provide consent to receive promotional text messages. Message in some fashion, uh, that express written consent is the highest form of consent.

32:01And I haven't met an organization that's tracking it yet. Well, and through the TCPA, which is the act that, uh, governs over texting and, and how you can communicate, it used to be that you had to have a wet signature for that promotional message to go out, and you had to retain it for 7 years even after you stopped your business. You still had to have it on file.

32:26It's now changed. You can track it digitally, but you have to be able to provide the source, the date, the time where consent was given for you to send promotional messages. Yeah. Yeah. Conversational reminders, informational. Now, and it's interesting, you've got informational broke out here that you do need consent. Express consent, which is different than express written consent. And this was interesting to me when I started studying this too.

32:53And these things, uh, are pretty stable. I don't see this element changing a lot, but the permission can happen over text on that, or on a form or a website, or verbally. And that's an interesting one. And that's just a message that contains information, just information. It's a status update, it's an appointment confirmation or a reminder. Those types of things are information text, and that's handled very differently than a promotional marketing text that's asking them to take an action.

33:23It tips towards promotional anytime you're asking them to click a link to schedule an appointment, for example, on your slow day blast type of scenario. That is a promotional text purely, even if it's a deferred service reminder. Think about those deferred service drips that people have active in just about every CRM system in the world. Yeah, that is asking the consumer to take an action.

33:46And this is exactly the type of thing I will be combating in, in our session at MARS because we have a better way forward. We can start talking a little bit about that here too. But like, those deferred work, uh, little drips are like— it's a strange thing to do. Uh, it's the thing your customers said no to during your visit that we're now assuming they want to receive a reminder about without any knowledge that this is coming, and certainly no express written consent.

34:15And all of the burden is fully on them to take the action to make something happen about that still deferred work. We aren't doing anything. We in fact automated the whole thing. Yeah, it's a reminder, as we discussed earlier. Right. What's the better way? Are we going to discuss that here? Are you waiting for— oh, we can talk on it here. So our better way is, is, well, it depends on our sense of purpose here.

34:40But I think let's, let's go to barrier number 5 before we talk about that better way, because I think this plays into the whole topic that we're discussing. And this is really the largest barrier, and it is the, the one that I think needs to be overcome before you fix any of the other ones. We don't have our whole organization truly oriented towards retention as a goal.

35:04What are we oriented towards then is the question I like to ask. And if you really stop and you really think about what your organization is structured to achieve What is it? And it might be what you consider your most important metric might give you a clue. I think it's an interesting question to ask, Jimmy. I do this a lot in different courses.

35:24I ask, what's, what's the most important metric for a service advisor or for a technician or for this or that? I like to ask specifically for our front counter staff, whether it be a CSR, a reservationist, a service advisor, whoever we have working our front counter, what is their most important important metric? And you get all kinds of answers. You've probably heard every one of them, Jimmy.

35:44Closing rate. Those service advisors are like, I sell 98.92% of all work I ever write up. Terrible stat, by the way, because that's the work you write up. You can artificially inflate your closing rate on sales by writing up what you know will sell. I, I, I'm gonna give you my answer. Okay. Your ratio of returning customers. Agreed. It's your most important statistic.

36:18If they're not coming back, you're doing something wrong. Correct. Yeah. I don't care what your ARO is really. I mean, it's an interesting stat to know. You'll establish baselines for all sorts of KPIs and tell you useful information. But is our goal to sell all of the stuff we find on every visit? And is our team like, is that's what's going to impress the boss?

36:38That's what's going to make him very happy? No, returning customers. Totally agree. Yeah, because what's the value of one good visit, right? What's the value of one visit versus the lifetime value of a client? Yes, the lifetime value has so much more weight to it. Tens of thousands of dollars versus hundreds. Yeah. Is that for that one visit? Some. Yeah. Like I had family accounts.

37:07Family accounts. Yeah. Literally in the hundreds of thousands with— for the lifetime value. Lifetime value of that particular individual. He had a lot of vehicles in the family. What's the family fleet? It's the family fleet. It's a fleet account. Yep. Yep. But even when the kids grew up, they were still coming in as well, too. And that, that the lifetime value of the relationships that turn into more things.

37:29Like, man, if that's true though, and we do this, Jimmy, we pay lip service to this all the time in our industry. It's a relationship-based business. It is. And then we go and, and we emphasize like, we got to sell this much and this is our target for sales and all this other thing. And it's like, and how much time really are we putting our human attention on our teams?

37:54Human attention in this frenetic age on retention strategy. How involved are they in your team right now towards the goal of getting people back in the door from the beginning of that visit to the end of that visit and what happens in between? The humans involved. And Jimmy, you've been in this industry. Most shops I hear, they say, hey, my guys aren't going to use this.

38:17I just need this to be automated. Yeah. We'll try and make it sound as personal as possible in that automation. But yeah, we use those cool little variables. Your service advisor gets filled in with the service advisor's name, all the automated messages. And automation has merit. We create through automation consistent repeatability of things that we want to have occur. That's good, right?

38:44It is. Make it personable and make sure you're responding. And make sure you had a hand in that and make sure you are responding correct. The service advisors know these are going out. They know when it's going out and they may be involved in scanning to see who replied and who didn't. Or maybe that's somebody's job in the shop. Yeah, we'll talk about this at Mars a little further.

39:03I believe it is somebody's job in the shop. We call— I call it the reservationist. A lot of people have a CSR. Yes, it's a fun topic because— and it goes deep and we have podcasts on that too. But Dude, it's an orientation thing. It's like, if it's important to you, you're going to do something about it. If it's not important to you, you won't do anything about it.

39:22And that's the, that's the measure that you have. Like, all right, so I just kind of threw a C.S. Lewis mindset at you. Uh, there's like, like, this is one of the things I love about reading some of these, these, uh, thinkers, right? It's like, and of course he's Christian apologetics and that sort of thing, but he, he said— I'm breaking it down to just a simple point— like, something is important or it's not important at all.

39:44That middle ground in this topic— I think this is true— that middle ground is not given to us, which forces us to either have to decide it's really not important and we can continue as we are because we're okay with the results, or no, this is a really important topic. Our strategy for getting clients into the shop is of actually critical importance to the ultimate success of our business and is the most important thing that we should be focusing on to guarantee our success.

40:06So we're going to really put in all of our effort towards this goal instead of just reacting to the chaos, reacting to the things that made it in today. Yeah. Wow. What would happen to your business with that focus? Oh, I love it. I love it. Yeah. Exponentially increase it. We want to rocket fuel this. Yeah. And I wonder what the statistics are there.

40:30There was a read a while ago that talked about Uh, restaurant industry was tracking this. How can they get a client to come back for the second dining experience and the third dining experience and the fourth dining experience? And once they get them in for that fourth dining experience, they've got a client for life. True. Yeah, I actually just had an interesting restaurant follow-up.

40:52I'm on the email list for one of the sushi joints here in Grand Rapids. I love sushi. Love this place we go, Maru Sushi on Cherry Street. Fantastic. Next time you're in Grand Rapids, wonderful. Love going there with my wife. It's our go-to spot. We had a couple months of a dry spell there where we didn't make it in, and we were busy with art shows and all sorts of stuff.

41:11And I got an email that must have been triggered. It's like their little lost customer reminders, like, yeah, it's been a while, here's a free app appetizer. Okay, next, on your next visit. It was an interesting follow-up. I thought it was really good, like, oh yeah, it has been a while, man, I want sushi right now, is what I experienced with that And then, and there's a benefit for me right there in it, and I already want to go there anyways.

41:32It's just been a while. Yes. Yeah, it's a great way of getting you back in. I, I— there was the example that the manager would go around and say, oh, is this your first time? They had different colored napkins. So he— servers ask us, they're the new ones that don't recognize us, they ask, have you guys been in before? It's like, oh yeah, you can hold on the menu.

41:54Unless you need it to show us that you haven't taken the order yet, right? Yeah, the, uh, the managers are going around and they're giving away, hey, on your second visit, make sure you try the cheesecake, and here's a coupon for a free cheesecake. You get me back for a $100 meal for a free cheesecake. Is it worth it? Totally. What's that cheesecake cost?

42:16Cheapest marketing. All right, so look, how much money do you spend on other marketing efforts? For what kind of results? Yeah. Well, and we've got to do the optimizing everywhere. We've got to optimize ourselves in all the locations, which is true. Yeah. But also how effective, and it's extremely, extremely effective when they're there at your shop enjoying the experience, you give them a reason to come back.

42:47Yes, and I like what you said there, Jimmy, and I think that's worth drawing some out a little further. What you described is what I like. We have an improv club in our Toastmasters club, so we play a lot of improv games, and we've been taught the yes, and yes, and yes, and yes, and it is— it's so— it's a rule in improv where one of the people in your troupe makes something that's truth.

43:10Now you react with that. It's not— you can't go combat this thing. It's not this or this. It's these things now have to be recognized as connected. The reality— binding forces for something good. Yeah, so you said all networks, all channels, and this is exactly it. This conversation that we're having doesn't say like, oh yeah, we just master this and we won't need to spend as much money in this other area.

43:34That's not necessarily the case. Now, although maybe you have some restructuring of that, it's you do refine your strategy on how your team is engaging retention, and you continue your outreach efforts, and maybe, maybe restructure how your phone call skills and other things go into all the effort you did take towards generating leads actually gets converted into real clients that come back again.

43:59Oh yeah, I was talking to a shop the other day. My marketing's not working, my marketing's not working, I need to redo all my marketing. Got digging into his phone call log, discovered 43% of phone calls were not being answered. No, 43%. This is, this is the world, uh, like that AI assistants are entering. And yes, this is like, this is the deepest, saddest thing in the world for me.

44:29AI assistants are one thing that is in demand, uh, and 2, that it's sometimes better than the people. If you're not able to answer the phone, you need to figure out either you need a human that's there answering the phone, or you implement this AI answering system that's tied to your point of sale that sees your schedule, that can schedule, better at containing the context and keeping the notes and everything else.

44:54Absolutely. Yeah, I know, and it's true. I, I do not support the idea that the AI answering system is going to replace your advisor? Absolutely not. No, you do need to answer the phone as quickly as you humanly possibly can. But if you're not able to, that's where you've got this backup that can take care of business. It's an interesting thing. Just that it needs to be backup, not plan A.

45:19Oh, not plan A. And in fact, you need to be aware, like, and we were having this conversation in our team too, because our sales guys, when they're calling shops, they're hitting AI. Yes, systems far more frequently than they ever used to. And it's interesting to see that volume go. But simultaneously, we understand, like, how do you feel personally when you call a business and the first thing you get is an AI?

45:44Are you happy or a little sad about that? And in an election year right now, it has turned divisive. And we did, Taylor, trace this back to, like, this really started about 2 weeks ago Even demos where we're talking about AI features, the data center issue is coming up. And like all these things are like top of mind, front and center, like, oh, I can't believe you guys are engaging with AI stuff in this world right now.

46:06And it's like, oh wow, hot button issue. You have an AI assistant, you probably are going to have a 50/50 split. I mean, I'm talking 50/50. Some people will love it and think it's fine or just tolerate it. The other 50% are going to hate it. Hate you and may never call you again. And congratulations, now we're in 2026. Yep. Well, and I, you know, I, I think the 50/50 might be a little, um— I'm just thinking about how the elections play out.

46:39Yeah, I propose there's probably a 30%, maybe a 33% that loves it, 33% that hates it, and 33% that's in that middle that says Yeah, I would love to see a strong third party too, Jimmy, but that's neither here nor there. So look at this though, like we talked orientation, we don't have a whole organization structured towards, uh, like retention. Now I, I had a great coach, Bob Greenwood, uh, was my coach, uh, he passed away 2021, uh, and I talk about this frequently.

47:10I echo what he taught me a long time ago, and he described our professional responsibility. He asked the question, what's our job? What's our job? What is your job? I remember being the technician in the room that raised my hand, and I told him what he was expecting someone in the room to raise their hand and say— cars. I fix cars. Yep.

47:28He pounced. He was ready. This is what he did. I've seen him do it multiple conversations after that. Said, no, your job, your professional responsibility is to make sure the vehicle's safe, reliable, and efficient. That's the job. And that, Mr. Client, is why we do a multipoint inspection on every vehicle that we do. And we will send this digitally to you and we won't let you down.

47:49Right. And there's lots more that goes into that. But there is a, there's a whole underlying sense of purpose about the service that we provided. And if that is our job to make sure the vehicle is safe, reliable, and efficient, we owe it to our customers to be participants in that as a member of the community of which they are also driving.

48:05And it has direct benefits to us and the other people we love on the streets. But that's, that's an orientation, right? And, and if that is what you believe about your purpose in this industry, yeah, we're going to start following up with the strong ability to communicate that sense of purpose. And people will hear the conviction in there and that commitment that you made to not letting them down.

48:32And that is not, is not going to be heard in your competitors. If you master this and you don't, you will stand out. I promise you. It's true. That's true. Craig, this is a phenomenal conversation that we're having, talking about all things marketing, customers, customer relationships, managing those relationships, communicating in their preferred method, form, and fashion. This is going to continue in our Mars Conference.

49:01Let's throw up that QR code again. If you are able to attend and you are listening to this, today is— what day is today? Today is the 9th. It's all Wednesday. September 9th, intensive giveaway winners. Oh, don't forget the giveaway winners here, Craig. We've— let you know what, hey, do you want to announce the winners first or do you want to announce the, uh, the special giveaway for everybody listening?

49:28Let's do the winners first, Jimmy. I'm excited. So we had a drawing, uh, as we had 2 tickets to give away to Mars. And we have 2 winners, and we'll be sending emails to these winners as well. Winner number 1, Preston Callahan. Winner number 2, Jordan Jaworenko. And we will get those emails out to you and hope to see you in Utah.

49:52And yeah, uh, bring your hiking shoes if you want to go up in the hills with me. I, uh, definitely encourage getting up in the hills. So are you gonna be rucking? Oh, you know, well, see, when I'm in the hills, I don't just bring useless weight, I bring actual hiking gear. So I just call it hiking when I'm actually in a mountain.

50:10When you're in Utah, you go hiking. Everywhere else, it's rucking. Rucking is what I would call, uh, urban hiking. It's for you flatlanders. Yeah, yeah. So no, I will definitely be— I have a pack. I have, uh, I put water in there for weight and snacks that I can eat. And the idea is you get it lighter as go with that sort of stuff.

50:28But oh, it's absolutely beautiful. Uh, so these are, uh, the winners from the AutoFlow, uh, uh, drawing that we'd had. Those of you who did not win on that drawing, we'll still email you and hope to see you in, uh, Utah. Take advantage of this promotion. Uh, I think it's going to be a great conversation. I've done this intensive multiple times, Jimmy.

50:47I got to give you guys some props on this because like this is like my favorite format literally in all events that I go to. You're in one room together at your headquarters in Ogden, Utah, which is a cool town. Everyone hears the same presenter. We get everyone here asking those same questions, and then the next presenter is going to be up, and then we do that.

51:06We have great food in between, and then there's breakout sessions afterward where we get to go and break out into groups and discuss everything that's done. Uh, no one's missing any of the context from any of the presentations. It's not like you're in one session and then another session is going on and like, man, that would have been a cool talk too, but this is really good.

51:23You don't have any fear of missing out on anything that's happening. Everybody's a participant the whole way. It's awesome. Oh, and I love that the vendors are included. Everyone is in the same room and we're having these conversations together. It's not just shop owners, shop owner point of view. We get everybody's point of view in on these conversations, which is super awesome.

51:44All right, so if you scan this QR code, grab out your smartphone, scan this QR code This is a coupon. It is own coupon. Oh, I hate calling it that. This is a special member VIP because you are watching this webinar. This is a— the— this code is good until 12 AM tomorrow morning Pacific Daylight Time. The code is— and I have to switch over to my other computer The code is MARS300.

52:17This is $300 off of the general admission pricing. So you and anybody in the public that is out there, you will get the webinar, the, uh, the whole entire intensive, Mars Intensive, at the Institute member pricing. So use the code MARS, M-A-R-S, 300. And that is good and for in the next, what, 12 hours? Yeah. And after you fill that out, 13 hours.

52:47You got 13 hours. Ready, set, go. Go ahead. If you fill that out, email us and I will tell you my favorite 2 sushi joints in Ogden, Utah. And maybe we can even grab a bite there. Oh, that's great. And you know what, we do have a couple of more tickets available. There's not a lot, but there are a few more tickets available for that exclusive dinner with Cecil Bullard.

53:09Nice. Great conversations. Uh, those that are speakers are invited to be able to be part of this conversation, and it's an exclusive dinner with Cecil. So you're going to have some really good, intense, great conversations with the speakers of the event, with Cecil being there. Uh, these are going to be some really good focused conversations. Those are my favorite moments, Jimmy. Yeah, the event is one thing, but the conversations that happen throughout and, and at dinners, uh, these— if you're not frequently going to industry events, uh, like this.

53:38Like, this is— you owe it to yourself to do this. The ideas that you get to go back with are phenomenal, and the connections that you make and the sense of community that you feel, uh, that, that's permanent. Agreed, agreed. Couldn't have said it better. Thank you, Craig. Congratulations to Preston. Congratulations to Jordan. Look forward to seeing you in Ogden, Utah, October 26th, 27th, and 28th.

54:03Right before SEMA Apex. And for those who are the adventurous types, uh, rent a car. Let's go drive down through Zion and Bryce Canyon. And I'm sure, Craig, if you haven't been to Zion National Park, what is that place? It is beautiful. Southern Utah, phenomenal, dude. I could go— we have another hour here so we can just talk about southern Utah. Like, man, dude, You guys have got the pocket of beauty in this world.

54:31It is phenomenal. Like, it's gorgeous. It is gorgeous. Absolutely. Salt Lake City is no joke either. You fly in there, you're gonna think this is amazing, and it is. And then you go to southern Utah and you think like, what is it? It gets better. Yep, yep. Glad you had a great experience with your family down there in southern— dude, my wife and I are flying out a little early.

54:51We're staying through the weekend before the Mars intensive. So, uh, we're gonna be hiking some hills then too. Uh, it's hard to get the bigger hikes in, in between the event stuff. Yes, it gets dark, it gets hard on the mountain. It does, it does. Even headlamps, not quite enough. I got you. Well, with that, thank you, Craig. I appreciate you being here, brother.

55:10Thank you so much. Look forward to Mars, the Mars intensive. Let's continue this conversation. Let's get in deeper with these conversations and, and have a great time. I will see you there. Thank you, everybody. See you soon.