Leading a $2B+ Auto Marketplace | CarGurus
发布时间 2023-12-05 10:00:39 来源
摘要
In this episode, I'm speaking with Jason Trevisan, CEO at CarGurus. This episode is brought to you by: CarNow - The industry ...
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中英文字稿 
Most consumers aren't expecting or trying to get some magical bargain. They just wanna get a fair enough deal and they wanna feel good about the deal they got and feeling good about the deal they got. 80% of that is just simply understanding why they got the deal they got. ["The Deal of They Got"]
大多数消费者并不期望或试图得到神奇的廉价商品。他们只是想得到一个足够公平的交易，并希望对他们所得到的交易感到满意和愉悦。其中80%的关键就是理解他们为何得到了这样的交易。
What's up everyone? This is Car Dealership Guy. You're listening to the Car Dealership Guy podcast, which is my effort to give you access to the most unbiased and transparent insights into the car market. Let's get into today's episode.
大家好，我是汽车销售员。你正在收听的是《汽车销售员播客》，它是我为了让你了解汽车市场最客观、透明的见解而努力创作的。让我们开始今天的节目吧。
Jason Trevison is CEO of CarGurus, an online car shopping and automotive research website. In this conversation we discussed how CarGurus is evolving under Jason's leadership, Amazon's potential threat to car dealers, cracking down on fake online car prices, why he's hiring former car dealers to work at CarGurus, why he acquired a company called Car Offer and much more.
Jason Trevison是CarGurus的首席执行官，CarGurus是一个在线汽车购物和汽车研究网站。在这次对话中，我们讨论了在Jason的领导下，CarGurus如何发展，亚马逊对汽车经销商的潜在威胁，打击虚假的在线汽车报价，为什么他在CarGurus雇佣了前汽车经销商，他为什么收购了一个叫做Car Offer的公司，以及其他许多内容。
But before we get into the show, this episode was brought to you by CarNow. CarNow is the industry leader in automotive messaging and digital retailing solutions. CarNow's powerful platform creates transparency and trust between customers and dealers by providing seamless dealer management and enhanced communication tools for shoppers.
在我们开始今天的节目之前，这一集由CarNow赞助。CarNow是汽车行业消息传递和数字零售解决方案的领导者。CarNow强大的平台通过为购物者提供无缝的经销商管理和增强的沟通工具，创建客户和经销商之间的透明度和信任。
New dealer partners who sign up before the end of the year can get 60 days of free service on any of CarNow's messaging and digital retailing solutions. 60 days. This is a big deal as CarNow partners are experiencing an impressive 77% average chat to lead conversion rate in a substantial return on their investment.
在今年年底之前注册的新代理商合作伙伴可以在CarNow的任何消息传递和数字零售解决方案上获得60天免费服务。60天。这是一个很大的优惠，因为CarNow的合作伙伴们正在经历77%的平均聊天转化率，从而获得了可观的投资回报。
Don't miss out and see how CarNow can make an impact your dealership by visiting carnow.com slash CDG or visiting the link in the show notes below. That's carnow.com slash CDG.
不要错过，通过访问carnow.com/CDG或点击下方节目说明中的链接，了解CarNow如何对您的经销商产生影响。即carnow.com/CDG。
This episode is also brought to you by CDK Global. CDK Global has been empowering nearly 15,000 dealers with the tools and technology they need to build deeper relationships with customers. Their team is keenly aware of the state of dealership technology.
本集由CDK Global赞助。CDK Global一直致力于为近15,000家经销商提供必要的工具和技术以建立更深入的客户关系。他们的团队对经销商技术的现状有着敏锐的认识。
And while many vendors promise seamless experiences between your CRM, DMS, digital retail and fixed ops, most of these bolt-on solutions tend to break workflows and cause more harm than good. That is why CDK has launched a new dealership experience platform.
许多供应商承诺在您的客户关系管理（CRM）、主动售后服务（DMS）、数字零售和固定运营之间提供无缝体验，但大部分这种附加解决方案往往会破坏工作流程，带来更多的危害。这就是为什么CDK推出了一个全新的经销商体验平台。
This new integrated software consists of everything you need to operate a dealership officially while delivering an unparalleled experience to your customers. Basically, everything working together, not separate, one system to run your dealership as opposed to 10.
这个全新的综合软件包括了开展一家正式经销商业务所需的一切，同时能为您的客户提供无与伦比的体验。基本上，所有的功能都整合在一起，而不是分散在10个不同的系统中，使您能够以一个系统运营您的经销商。
CDK developed it with an outside-in approach listening to dealers every step of the way. You can learn more about CDK's dealership experience platform by visiting CDK Global.com slash DXP or clicking the link in the show notes below.
CDK秉持从外向内的方法，一直倾听经销商的每一步需求，并开发出了这个产品。您可以通过访问CDK Global.com/ DXP或点击下方节目说明中的链接了解更多关于CDK的经销商体验平台的信息。
What I was drawn to when I learned more about Carver was back in 2015, was that technology had not had the profound impact on the automotive industry that it had on a lot of other industries yet. I think there's a number of reasons for that, but the size of the purchase, the local nature of the business.
当我在2015年了解更多关于Carver（某人或某物）时，吸引我的是科技对汽车业还未像其他许多行业那样产生深远影响。我认为有很多原因，但购车的金额和业务的地方性质是主要原因之一。
And so joining a technology company in automotive, at that time, I saw what I thought was a huge transformation opportunity, still yet to happen, that it happened in a lot of other industries. And I also love marketplaces. I had invested in a couple internet marketplaces and or marketplace software in my prior life as an investor.
所以，当时加入一家汽车科技公司，我看到了一个我认为是巨大的转型机会，但它在许多其他行业中都尚未发生。我也喜欢市场。在我之前作为投资者时，我投资了几个互联网市场或市场软件。
And when you can find win-wins in a marketplace, they just become really good, strong businesses that add a lot of value. And so the fact that auto had a tech opportunity and Cargurus was a marketplace model was sort of a perfect storm for me.
当你在市场中找到双赢的机会时，它们会变成非常好的、有力的企业，为市场增加很多价值。所以汽车行业有技术机会，而Cargurus是一个市场模式，对我来说简直是一个完美的机遇。
Yeah, do you feel like, since you joined Cargurus until now, do you feel like the tech has really made a big difference in the consumer experience? Or do you feel like it's been a lot of hype and every year going to the automotive, the NADA conference, digital retail, digital retail. Like not much has changed.
是的，你觉得自从你加入Cargurus以来，科技是否对消费者体验产生了很大的影响呢？还是你觉得这只是很多噱头，每年都去参加汽车经销商协会（NADA）会议，谈论数字零售，数字零售。仿佛没有太多改变。
Kind of where are you, that spectrum of the evolution of truly getting to an online car buying experience? Well, yes, I mean, to your first question, yeah, technology has really changed, I think the consumer experience of car shopping and buying.
你在哪个阶段，真正实现在线购车体验的进化过程呢？是的，我的意思是，回答你的第一个问题，是的，科技确实改变了消费者在购车和购买过程中的体验。
I remember during our IPO roadshow in 2017, we used a statistic then that in 2000, I think it was 2012, the average consumer visited about five dealerships for making a purchase. And by 2017, it was 1.8 dealerships or something like that. And now it's even less than that.
我记得在我们2017年的首次公开发行(IPO)路演中，我们使用了一项统计数据，据称在2000年时，消费者购买商品时平均要到大约五家经销商。到了2017年，这个数字变成了1.8家经销商左右。而现在这个数甚至比那还要少。
And that's because consumers are using the web to gather so much more information to research, to prepare, contrast. And so that was, you know, call it 2012 to 2020. I think since then, the next step has been, well, how do we move parts of that transaction online?
这是因为消费者正在利用互联网收集更多信息进行研究、准备和对比。所以这可以说是从2012年到2020年的情况。我认为自那时以来，下一步就是如何将交易的某些部分搬到线上进行？
And in the consumer's mind, that manifests itself in, I can do a lot more online, go to the dealership still, because the vast majority still want to go to the dealership, but I'll spend an hour or two hours there instead of five hours.
在消费者的心中，这表现为，我可以在网上做更多事情，仍然去经销商那里，因为绝大多数人仍然希望去经销商那里，但我只会在那里待上一两个小时，而不是五个小时。
So you're an online marketplace, right? And you just said something very important. So you think that the vast majority of consumers still want to go to a physical dealership? Well, the data, yes, the data supports that. I mean, that when you ask consumers, 80% say they want to do more online. So almost everybody wants to do more online. And then, you know, about half a consumer say they're open to buying fully online, but just the numbers today or, you know, this year will show that those who actually do buy fully online is still single digits percent. So, you know, so what they're saying they want is different than what the behavior is. And I think the behavior, you know, I think the percent portion who want to buy, who will buy fully online, that's going to grow. But I don't think that becomes 80% in the next five years. We believe that's going to come 15.
所以你是一个在线市场，对吗？你刚刚说了件很重要的事情。所以你认为绝大多数消费者仍然想去实体经销店购物？嗯，数据支持这一观点。我的意思是，当你问消费者时，80%的人表示希望在网上购物更多。所以几乎所有人都希望在网上购物更多。然后，大约一半的消费者表示他们愿意完全在线购买，但实际上，到目前为止或者说今年的数据显示，完全在线购买的人仍然只占很小的比例。所以，他们说的想法与行为不同。我认为购买完全在线的人口比例会增长。但我认为在未来五年内，这一比例不会达到80%。我们相信这个比例将会达到15%。
I want to shift gears for one second. So you mentioned taking over SEO after the founder. What was that like? I can't speak for the company. What I can say for myself is just, first of all, I think being the CEO, I'm a first-time CEO. And so being the CEO of any company is a huge responsibility. And one that honestly, I don't think the gravity of it hit me right away, but it's a responsibility to the employees, to our customers, to our shareholders. And so it's a significant commitment for any CEO, regardless of who they're taking over from. As I'd worked with Langley for five years before we made this move, and so we had a really good working relationship. In my prior life, I was an investor. We was focused on growth, biots, technology companies. And so I'd had the privilege to work alongside and with entrepreneurs who had built successful businesses. I saw the transitions oftentimes that they went through. So I'd seen a similar transition, half a dozen times at least. And Langley's still active. He's still on the board, and I still spend time with him on a regular basis. But what I'm trying to do now in my role here is continue to strike the balance of keeping the positives of an entrepreneurial, innovative startup company that continues to break ground and bring new things to the market. But with the realities of being a billion dollar public company that has almost 10x the employees it did when I joined. And so that's got more complexity to it. There's also a significantly more opportunity. And it's part, things that need to be built and put in place for scalability coupled with a nimbleness that needs to remain in place for innovation.
我想暂时改变话题。所以你提到在创始人之后接管SEO，那是什么感觉？关于公司我不能说什么。但对我来说，首先，我认为作为CEO，我是第一次担任CEO。所以成为任何公司的CEO都是一项巨大的责任。而且这种责任不仅针对员工、顾客，还有股东们。无论接管的是谁，这对任何一位CEO来说都是一项重要承诺。在我们做这个决定之前，我已与朗利合作了五年，所以我们有非常好的工作关系。在我的前一段职业生涯中，我是一名投资者，专注于成长型、生物科技公司。所以我有幸与许多建立成功企业的企业家一起工作过。我看到他们经历的转型。我至少见过半打类似的过渡。朗利仍然活跃，他还在董事会上，我仍然定期与他见面。但我现在在这个职位上的目标是保持企业家式的创新初创企业所具有的积极特质，继续开拓新领域并推向市场。但同时也要面对成为一个10倍规模的亿美元上市公司带来的现实挑战。这增加了更多的复杂性，也带来了更多的机遇。为了实现规模化，我们需要建立和落实一些事情，同时还需要保持创新的敏捷性。
Yeah, I think one thing we'll get into shortly is just looking through kind of the history of the company. I did some research obviously part of the coin, I know enough, but you've been inquisitive, which I think is interesting because I feel like founders, and I'm not speaking for lengthy by the way, but when I think of founders, right, like founders are founders, they're not usually very inquisitive. There's exceptions of course, but you have been. And so I think that's definitely more of, it sort of makes sense to me given your background, come from the financial world, just sort of seek just opportunity, maybe in non-traditional ways, or just not, we don't have to build it, right? We can buy it. So we'll get into that, I'm really curious about Car Offer.
是的，我觉得很快我们会探讨公司的历史。我自己做了一些研究，当然我也了解一些，但你的好奇心让我觉得很有意思。因为在我看来，创始人通常不是很好奇的人，当然也有例外。但你是个例外。所以，对于你的背景来说，这一点对我来说是有意义的，因为你来自金融业，可能在非传统的方式中寻找机会，或者不一定要自己建造，而是可以进行收购。所以我们会进一步探讨这个问题，我对Car Offer真的很好奇。
I would have table set on the business, for anyone that's listening that, and I'm sure there's people listening here that are public market investors and gurus. I'm sure there's people that have maybe shopped on gurus when CarGurus of course buying a car, and then I'm sure there's some people that are actually not too familiar with it. So can you just like table set, explain to us the core business model, what is CarGurus and what do you actually do? So at our core, we are a listings marketplace. And so what that means is, and we have a freemium model, which is really important, because honestly that's what I think distinguished us initially and still does today. So a marketplace with a freemium model means that, we will take inventory from any dealer, as many dealers as want to put their inventory on our site for free or whether they pay us, and we will provide information on that inventory and on those dealers for car shoppers. And by having a freemium approach, we've been able to amass the largest inventory of any marketplace, the largest number of dealers. And we've also, during that time, built up the largest consumer audience, the most unique, the most sessions, the most time spent, the most engaged.
我希望能为正在倾听的所有人提供关于CarGurus的商业模式的详细解释，我相信这里有一些公开市场的投资者和专家。当然，我相信有些人可能是在CarGurus购车时有所了解，也有一些人对此并不太熟悉。所以你能为我们解释一下CarGurus的核心商业模式和实际运作吗？实际上，我们的核心业务是一个车辆信息交易平台。我们采取免费增值模式，这非常重要，因为我认为这是我们最初和至今的特点。免费增值模式意味着，我们将免费提供任何经销商的车辆库存，并提供与这些经销商和车辆有关的信息给购车消费者。通过采取免费增值的方式，我们已经积累了最大规模的车辆库存和最多的经销商数量。在此期间，我们也建立了最大规模的消费者用户群体，具有最多独立访问数、最多时间投入和最高参与度。
What are some of those numbers, if you have readily available? Yeah, we have about 40% more total visits than our next competitor. We have about 30% more minutes on site per unique than the next competitor. From an engagement perspective, consumers are three times more likely to use our site last before buying a car. So where the last site they use before buying. And that's all a function of, certainly we have a good traffic acquisition engine, but we believe that's a function of, we offer a great product, and that great product is the most inventory with the most information on the inventory, delivered and sorted and organized in a way that's most helpful to consumers.
如果您方便的话，有些数据可以提供吗？是的，我们的总访问量比下一个竞争对手多约40%。我们每个独立用户的站点停留时间比下一个竞争对手多约30%。从用户参与度的角度来看，在购车前，用户选择最后使用我们的网站的可能性是其他网站的三倍。这就是他们购车前最后访问的网站。这些都是因为我们拥有强大的流量获取引擎，但我们相信这是因为我们提供了一款优秀的产品，该产品拥有最多的库存信息，并以对用户最有帮助的方式进行交付、排序和组织。
Got it. So you think that what drives you at the core is the product and the consumer experience? Yes, I mean, yes, I think of our product as our best asset. This is built by our people, obviously. So our core business is that dealers can subscribe to that. And if a dealer subscribes to that, then they get a number of benefits that a free dealer would. And so some of those benefits are, they get unlimited leads and higher quality leads and connections. They get access to tools and insights that they otherwise wouldn't. They get features that help them convert those leads better. And so our value prop to bring up dealer on for listings package is we're gonna typically give you, and every dealer's different, but we're gonna typically give you the most volume of leads, the highest quality, based on our pricing, the best ROI. And then we're gonna give you tools and insights that help you market and sell your cars better than you otherwise could.
明白了。所以你认为推动你的核心是产品和用户体验对吗？是的，我的意思是，我认为我们的产品是我们最好的资产。这是由我们的员工构建的，显然。所以我们的核心业务是，经销商可以订阅我们的产品。如果经销商订阅我们的产品，他们就能享受到一些免费经销商无法获得的好处。其中一些好处包括，他们可以获得无限量和更高质量的潜在客户和连接。他们可以获得工具和见解，否则他们无法获得。他们可以使用帮助他们更好地转化这些潜在客户的功能。所以我们向经销商提供的价值主张是，我们通常会为您提供最多量、最高质量的潜在客户，基于我们的定价，可以提供最好的投资回报率。然后我们会提供工具和洞见，帮助您市场和销售您的汽车，比您原本可以做到的更好。
Yeah, and when you launched, I guess it was before you, I'm gonna guess, but when you guys came out with the freemium model, was that novel in the industry, like getting dealers on for free, right? Almost like getting them hooked, and then they pay up for maybe more services. Was that novel before that? Like was it always pay to play before that? Yes, it was always pay to play before that. So this was totally, totally destructive. And we were also the first, and we really pride ourselves on all the things that we've been first in. We were also the first to give certain transparency to consumers like, you know, time on site, number of price drops, but also what ultimately culminates in the most valuable asset we offer, which is an unbiased deal rating, which says effectively, use cars are hard to, it's hard for a consumer to know how a used car should be priced. So we do that AI work for them and say, based on all other cars, most similar to this and their pricing, this car with these features, this trim with this mileage, is priced at a great deal from a great deal. And that declaration that we make, and we're not shy to say cars are overpriced if we think they're overpriced, is a significant value to the consumer.
是的，当你们推出的时候，我猜应该是在你们之前，但当你们推出免费模式时，这在行业中是新颖的，就像免费获得经销商一样，几乎像是让他们上瘾，然后他们付费获取更多的服务。在此之前，这是新颖的吗？在此之前一直都是付费才能参与吗？是的，在此之前一直都是付费才能参与。所以这完全是一种破坏性的创新。我们也是第一个，而我们非常自豪地成为了很多方面的先驱者。我们也是第一个向消费者提供了一些透明度，比如网站停留时间、价格下降次数，但最终最有价值的是我们提供的公正的交易评级，也就是说二手车辆的定价对消费者而言很难知道。因此，我们为他们做了基于其他与此车型最相似的车辆和其定价的人工智能工作，告诉他们，具有这些功能、这个磨损程度的车辆的价格是来自一个很棒的交易中的极好的交易。我们对此进行宣示，如果我们认为某些车辆定价过高，我们也毫不掩饰地说出来，这对于消费者来说具有重要的价值。
How do you balance, and by the way, I think I'm in a very similar position, and I'll explain in a second, but how do you balance the dealer is your customer, right? But the consumer is almost like the user, and you want to deliver an optimal consumer experience, you want to, of course, make your customer, the dealer happy. How are you balancing that? And one quick thing I'll add before you answer that is that, I feel like I'm in a similar position where on one hand, I talk to the dealer community, B2B community, on the other hand, I talk to the consumer community. So I have my own thoughts, I'm not you, I don't want car guru, so I'm curious to hear how you're handling that internally.
你如何平衡，顺便说一下，我觉得我的处境非常相似，我一会儿会解释，但你如何平衡经销商是你的客户对吗？但消费者几乎就像是用户，你希望提供最佳的消费者体验，当然，你也想让你的客户，即经销商感到满意。你是如何平衡这一点的呢？在回答之前，我还想补充一点，我感到自己处于类似的位置，一方面，我与经销商社区、B2B社区交流，另一方面，我与消费者社区交流。所以我有我的想法，我并不是你，我也不想成为Car Guru，所以我很好奇你是如何在内部处理这个问题的。
Yeah, and I almost brought up that parallel earlier when you and I were chatting, because I do think we think of ourselves as a market-making platform that tries to find mutually beneficial solutions. And so the short answer is we do that because we all view it all as a zero-sum game, and a more pointed example is if we give a consumer more information on a car, and the consumer reaches out to that dealer to inquire about that car, they're just simply more likely to convert to a sale because they're not reaching out to ask a question that they didn't know the answer to. So by giving more transparency and by giving more information, we're actually helping bring consumers further down the funnel. So by the time they get to the dealer, it's much higher yield for the dealer, and the dealer's not answering questions like, how long have I had this car in the lot, and did I drop the price?
是的，我几乎在我们聊天时提到了这个类似的例子，因为我认为我们把自己看作一个市场制造平台，试图找到互利的解决方案。所以简单来说，我们这么做是因为我们都认为这是一个零和博弈的情况，更具体的例子是，如果我们向消费者提供更多关于一辆汽车的信息，而消费者联系那个经销商来询问那辆汽车，他们更有可能转化为一次销售，因为他们不是在询问一个他们已经知道答案的问题。所以通过提供更多的透明度和信息，我们实际上帮助消费者更进一步地了解产品。所以当他们到达经销商时，对经销商来说产出更高，而且经销商不需要回答像“这辆车在车场停了多久了？”和“我是否降低了价格？”这样的问题。
So your claim is a quicker path to the sale for the dealer, save me time, make me more money, right? That's essentially the value proposition.
所以你的观点是，对于经销商而言，这是一条更快通向销售的路径，为我节省时间，让我赚更多钱，对吗？基本上这就是价值主张。
Yep.
是的。
I think one of the most important questions I wanted to ask you is, I posted for a dealer to send me questions, I got a bunch of questions, some small deal or some big dealers. And I think what is really irked dealers across third-party marketplaces in general in recent years is as the industry's gotten more competitive, everyone who isn't on the internet nowadays, of course it's A's and B's are running any business, is just people gaming the system, right? And there's been plenty of dealers that have tried to kind of get a leg up on other dealers by, you know, putting, oh, this car is 20,000, and then there's an addendum, we add $3,000, we add $2,000.
我认为我想问您的最重要的问题之一是，我帖子中提到了请经销商给我发问题，我收到了一堆问题，有些是小交易或大经销商。我认为最近几年来在第三方市场上真正让经销商恼火的是，随着行业竞争的加剧，如今谁不上网，当然是对所有业务进行A和B级别的调整，只不过是人为操纵系统，对吧？有很多经销商试图通过这样的方式超过其他经销商，比如说，这辆车价值20,000美元，并且还有一个额外的费用，我们要加3,000美元，或者加2,000美元。
So I think what lots of people wanna know from you is like, what are you going to do about that, or what are you doing about it? Because it's definitely something that is happening, and it just harms other dealers, and it's actually a self-perpetuating kind of death spiral, because then other dealers are like, well, they're doing it, I should do it as well, I have no choice, I mean, I need to survive. So how do you think about that? Have you done anything about that?
所以我觉得很多人想知道的是，你对此有什么打算，或者你已经采取了什么行动？因为这绝对是一种正在发生的情况，它只会损害其他经销商，并且实际上是一种自我循环的死亡螺旋，因为其他经销商会想，好吧，他们在做，我也应该这样做，我别无选择，我是说，我需要生存下去。那么你对此有何看法？你已经采取了什么措施吗？
Yeah, we think about that a lot, and we have done a lot, and we'll continue to, because you're right, it does happen, and there's no silver bullet, but we do a lot. So we have, we call it a data integrity team, but we have an entire team dedicated to tracking down instances of that, responding to claims of that, and doing the investigative work and research to figure out if that's happening, and if we find out that that's happening, those dealers get removed from our site.
是的，我们经常思考这个问题，我们也做了很多，并且我们会继续努力，因为你是对的，这确实发生了，而且没有什么捷径，但我们确实做了很多工作。所以我们成立了一个数据完整性团队，专门负责追踪这种情况，对相关索赔进行回应，并进行调查和研究，以确定是否确实存在这种情况。如果我们发现确实存在这种情况，我们将从我们的网站上剔除这些经销商。
So you're removing dealers that are doing this?
那么你是在移除那些这样做的经销商吗？
Oh, yes, 100%, yeah. But I mean, we don't catch 100% of it, don't get me wrong, but no, we have a team that finds as much as they can, and removes dealers. We have, increasingly, we're using AI and technology measures in addition to the people that we have on that team, which is early days on that, but with other third party data sources, we're able to start applying technology to see if there are different pricing schemes going on. We also have our dealer rating, and that's a good old fashioned feedback loop of consumers saying, one out of five stars, because when I showed up, they tried to force me into this $3,000 added fee that you just described, and that's a pretty powerful thing, and dealers know that a poor dealer rating on our site has a lot of implications and sort of cost associated with it. So, and the last thing I'd say too, is as a public company, we have to think about trying to seek out and eliminate fraud on so many dimensions for SOCs compliance and things like that, that we have gotten much better in the last five years at overall security and fraud prevention in dozens of forms. This is one that we've actually been doing since we were private, but we've dialed up the investment in a sense.
哦，是的，百分之百，是的。但我是说，我们不能捕捉到百分之百的问题，误会了吧，但不，我们有一个团队尽力找出尽可能多的问题，并除掉经销商。我们越来越多地使用人工智能和技术手段，除了我们团队中的成员外，我们还使用其他第三方数据来源，通过技术来检测是否存在不同的定价方案。我们还有我们的经销商评级，这是一种传统的消费者反馈循环，消费者可以给出一到五颗星的评级，因为当我去的时候，他们试图强迫我支付你刚刚描述的3000美元的附加费，这是非常强大的，经销商知道我们网站上的低评级会带来很多影响和相关费用。所以，最后一点，作为一家上市公司，我们必须在很多层面上思考如何寻找和消除欺诈，以符合的合规要求等等，过去五年中我们在整体安全和欺诈预防方面取得了巨大进步，在许多形式上。这是我们自从私人时期就一直在做的事情之一，但我们在某种意义上加大了投资力度。
That's helpful. I think it's refreshing, I think dealers will appreciate that. On the topic of just the marketplace, I wanted to ask you about Google vehicle listing ads, right? So for anyone here that's listening to that doesn't even know what that means. If you go on Google, you search some car, your make model, right? You'll see some actual ads natively on Google, right? It's what we call vehicle listing ads. How do you think about that, right? How do you hedge your business against Google trying to kind of front run you?
那真是太有帮助了。我觉得这是更新鲜的事物，我认为经销商会很欣赏。关于市场方面的问题，我想问一下你对谷歌车辆广告有何看法，对吧？那么对于那些不知道这意味着什么的人来说。如果你在谷歌上搜索某辆车，你会看到一些谷歌原生广告，对吧？我们称之为车辆广告列表。你对此有何看法呢？你如何保护自己的业务不被谷歌抢先一步呢？
Well, it's a playbook that Google has used for a decade or so in a number of other verticals. So, it's not necessarily a surprise to me, and we knew that they were working on auto for a while now. So, Google is certainly a source of audience for us, both paid SEM as well as organic. And when they launched VLA, the vehicle listing ads, we were a beta user. And so, we embraced it early on, and that channel has grown significantly in the past year for us. It performs really well from an efficiency and quality standpoint. And by quality, I mean, we can use third party to actually track conversion to sale by channel. So, without access to the dealer's DMS, we use third party triangulation to say, well, we know, for instance, that audience that we source from channel A converts to sale better than audience from channel B. So, I would say, short answer is VLA is now a third leg of the stool for us with Google, in addition to the traditional paid search, as well as organic.
这其实是谷歌在其他领域已经使用了十年左右的一种策略，对我来说并不令人意外，我们也知道他们一段时间以来一直在研发汽车相关的技术。因此，谷歌对我们来说无疑是一个潜在的受众来源，包括付费搜索引擎营销和自然搜索。当他们推出车辆列表广告(VLA)时，我们是首批用户之一。所以，我们早早地接受了它，并且过去一年中，这个渠道在我们这里有了显著增长。从效率和质量的角度来看，它的表现非常出色。在质量方面，我指的是我们可以使用第三方跟踪转化率来跟踪销售渠道。因此，尽管我们无法访问经销商的DMS，但我们可以通过第三方的三角定位方法，得知我们通过A渠道获得的受众转化率会比通过B渠道获得的受众更好。所以，简而言之，除了传统的付费搜索和自然搜索，车辆列表广告(VLA)现在是我们与谷歌合作的第三个重要渠道。
And when you say third leg, you're saying it's driving traffic to you?
当你说第三条腿，你是指它为你带来了流量？
It's driving traffic to, yeah, to the effectively the SR, the vehicle unit that is showed there. If the user chooses to come to our site to get that information for it, as opposed to go out into the dealer's side drive. Do you think there's any more risk in Google raising the bids? I mean, obviously it's a bid, so it's competitive. But do you think there's any more risk in that than say, consumers going to chat GPT in five years and searching that way?
这句话的意思是，它（指的是某个东西）正在为我们带来流量，嗯，就是有效地为我们展示的SR（某个车辆单元）。如果用户选择来我们的网站上获取相关信息，而不是去经销商那边的车行去获取。你认为谷歌提高竞价还会增加更多风险吗？我的意思是，显然这是个竞价，所以会有竞争。但你认为这比说五年后的消费者通过聊天GPT的方式进行搜索存在更多风险吗？
How do you sort of fit into the puzzle? And how do you think about your business fitting into that puzzle? Or I mean, just kind of ties you with my next question, which is like, are you diversifying away from that to a hedge that risk, right? Because I do know you have some digital retailing and stuff like that, which we can get into as well. I'm trying to think though, if I'm in your shoes, I see Chad GPT rising, consumer attention gravitating there. I find myself even like searching things on Chad GPT that I would, a year ago, I would search on Google. So then how do you kind of, and when you look at the entire puzzle, how do you sort of fit in that as things continue evolving and consumer attention sort of goes left and right?
你在这个谜题中如何适应？你如何考虑你的业务如何融入这个谜题中？或者说，这是与我的下一个问题相关的，你是否在多样化以避免风险？因为我知道你们有一些数字零售等等，我们也可以谈到。不过，我在思考的时候，如果我是你，我会看到Chad GPT正在崛起，消费者的注意力也在那里聚集。我发现自己甚至在Chad GPT上搜索一些以前我会在谷歌上搜索的东西。那么，当你看整个谜题时，当事物不断演变且消费者的注意力左右摇摆时，你如何找到自己的位置呢？
Well, so we do see Google doing is using up more of the page for their own content. And so at a minimum that pushes down organic search results for everyone. So we certainly see that. And yes, we have put a lot of effort in over the years to diversify. I mean, we think about diversification in a lot of different ways, our revenue diversification, partner diversification supplier. But certainly in traffic acquisition, diversity is important to us. And as an example of that, we're always testing new channels to try to diversify more. And Chad GPT is a perfect example of that where we were the first US marketplace to launch a Chad GPT plugin. They allow shoppers to use conversational search to shop for their next car. And so the example is, I'm a 33 year old father of two children. And this is the type of automobile I think I want. What would you recommend? And then it provides the make model trim recommendations and then it links directly to one of our SRPs.
嗯，我们确实看到谷歌正在利用更多页面来展示自己的内容。至少这样做会把有机搜索结果往下推。我们确实看到了这一点。是的，多年来我们已经付出了很多努力来实现多样化。我们考虑到多样化的方式很多，包括收入多样化、合作伙伴多样化和供应商多样化。但对于获取流量方面，多样性对我们来说很重要。我们一直在尝试新渠道来实现更多的多样化。例如，Chad GPT就是一个很好的例子，我们是第一个在美国市场推出Chad GPT插件的在线市场。它可以让购物者使用对话式搜索来寻找下一辆汽车。举个例子，我是一个33岁有两个孩子的父亲，我想要买一辆这样类型的汽车，你有什么推荐？然后它会提供品牌、型号和车身配置的推荐，并直接链接到我们的SRP页面之一。
We're also piloting conversational search tools on our sites that are not dissimilar from Chad GPT using generative AI and allowing search to get an answer from it. So yeah, we think about acquiring customers from more rather than less sources. We try to stay ahead of the curve where we can, knowing that the volume's not there today, but if the volume's gonna be there tomorrow, we wanna be ahead. We also though look at it all through the lens of quality and that quantity and that's a really important thing because there are some sources where we could build a much, much bigger audience for much less money, but it would be lower quality leads that we're passing on to the dealers. And that's not, that's the opposite of what we wanna do. So it's not just about efficiency.
我们还在我们的网站上试验了与Chad GPT相似的生成式人工智能对话搜索工具，可以通过它获取答案。所以，是的，我们考虑从更多渠道获得客户，而不是更少。我们试图在可能的情况下保持领先地位，知道现在的规模还不够，但如果明天的规模会有所增长，我们希望能抢先一步。然而，我们也会从质量的角度来看待这一切，而不只是数量，这一点非常重要，因为有一些渠道可以用更少的资金吸引更大的观众群体，但这可能会给经销商带来低质量的线索。这与我们的初衷相反。所以这不仅仅是效率的问题。
You've had some ventures into digital retailing experience, other things, I mean, scheduling, test drive, which is a bunch of features that you've sort of launched over the last couple of years. What is your thought process there? Like how do you sort of envision car groups evolving? And what's that customer experience going to be like, buying a car and leveraging your platform? What is that going to look like?
您在数字零售方面已经有了一些尝试，还有其他方面，比如调度、试驾，这些都是您在过去几年中推出的一系列功能。您在这方面的思考过程是什么样的？您如何设想汽车集团的发展？以及购买汽车和利用您的平台的顾客体验会是怎样的？这将会是怎样的一个场景？
Yeah, so, and I was gonna take us back here when you asked me to talk about the business because the big decision that we made a few years ago was that being just simply a lead generation marketplace was not a viable long-term strategy for a business because consumers were saying and they're now showing, they just wanna do more and more online. And I think dealers are embracing that as well because they're able to be more efficient with smaller sales forces perhaps, they can be more productive. So we said we wanna move into supporting the transaction. And that means a bunch of things. It in three, you know, broad buckets, it means it could mean supporting a retail transaction, supporting a trade-in or instant cash offer and then supporting wholesale transactions.
嗯，是的，当你要我谈论业务时，我本来打算带我们回到这里，因为几年前我们做出的重大决策是，仅仅作为一家潜在客户生成市场是不可行的长期战略，因为消费者正在表达并且现在正在展示，他们只想在网上做更多的事情。我认为经销商也正在接受这一点，因为他们能够通过较小的销售团队变得更加高效，他们可以提高生产力。所以我们说我们想要进入交易支持领域。这意味着很多事情。简单来说，它可以意味着支持零售交易，支持置换或即时现金报价，以及支持批发交易。
And so we made the decision to basically build or acquire all three of those transaction capabilities to sort of put them on top of our marketplace so that consumers could not only shop for a car, but they could also get financed, they could buy a car and they could sell a car and the dealers could not only market their cars on our site, but eventually they could source cars through our platform, market their cars and sell their cars.
因此，我们决定基本上构建或收购这三种交易功能，然后将它们整合到我们的市场中，这样消费者不仅可以购物，还可以获得融资，购买和出售汽车，同时，经销商不仅可以在我们的网站上市他们的汽车，最终他们还可以通过我们的平台采购汽车，市场化汽车并出售汽车。
So what it looks like if we focus on let's say retail, a retail transaction, the bulk of the market today, the consumer market wants to do more of the transaction online but not by fully online. So we built a product that allows a consumer to pick and choose what they wanna do on our site that is fully in the dealers infrastructure and ecosystem. And that could mean getting a trade-in estimate or getting fully financed from where the dealers financing partners, it could be putting down a deposit, could be constructing a penny-perfect deal, it could be setting up an appointment and let the consumer choose that.
所以，如果我们专注于零售行业，即今天市场的主要部分，消费市场希望在在线上进行更多交易，但不完全在线上。因此，我们开发了一个产品，允许消费者在我们的网站上选择他们想要做的事情，这完全基于经销商的基础设施和生态系统。这可能意味着获得二手交易估价或从经销商的融资合作伙伴处获得完全融资，也可能是付定金、进行完美的交易或预约安排等，消费者可以自行选择。
And then when they walk into the dealership, which they all do through this product, it's called Digital Deal, then the dealership has a pretty baked deal and a consumer that converts it multiples what a normal legal contract.
然后当他们进入经销商店时，通过这种名为Digital Deal的产品，经销商会拥有一项已经成熟的交易和一个能够促成多项正常法律合同的消费者。
Yeah, I was gonna say, does that infringe on a dealer's profits?
嗯，我本来就想说，这是否会侵犯经销商的利润？
No, no, no, no, it's, I mean, dealers, what we've heard so far is dealers love it because they then know that when one of these Digital Deal leads comes in, they are still able to do everything they would have done before. In fact, you could argue they get two bites at the apple, they get the opportunity to have marketed some financing to the consumer on our site and then they can market additional financing or warranty or any F&I to them in the dealership and those leads convert it up to 5X. And so, no, it, yeah, you know, again, with an ROI focus to kind of how we approach dealers, that's, it's a great return.
不，不，不，不，我是说，经销商，到目前为止我们听到的是经销商喜欢它，因为这样他们就知道当一个Digital Deal的线索来临时，他们仍然能够做他们以前做过的一切。实际上，你可以认为他们有两次机会，他们有机会在我们的网站上为消费者营销一些融资，然后他们可以在经销店为他们营销额外的融资、保修或任何F&I产品，而这些线索能提升5倍转化率。所以，不，是的，你知道的，再次强调我们对经销商的投资回报率的关注，这是一个很好的回报。
We have lots of consumers that listen to this as well. So I think while we're on this topic, why is car gurus a great option for consumers from your perspective? What do you think you offer? Or is this, is it, is it what you just mentioned? Is that sort of the secret sauce? But what do you think it is?
我们有很多消费者也会听这个。所以我认为在这个话题上，从您的角度来看，为什么汽车行家是消费者的一个很好选择？你认为你们提供了什么？或者说，你刚才提到的是不是一种秘密配方？但你认为是什么呢？
Yeah, I would say if I was talking to my cousin at Thanksgiving, let's say, I would say, we are this, we are the site that has the most inventory from the most dealers. And so if you, if you want selection, then come to our site. We offer the most information on those cars and on those dealers. And we sort it in the way that is most helpful to you. And we also allow you to do most of the elements of the transaction on our site, if you'd like. And if not, you don't have to use any of it. Your cousin, your cousin's buying cars this weekend. Actually, thank you. I didn't see my cousin at Thanksgiving. But if I had, that's what it was. Yeah, this, that would be the answer. Your cousin probably has no idea what you're doing. Like, he works at some car company.
是的，我会说，如果我在感恩节和我的堂兄谈话的话，我会说，我们是这样的，我们是拥有来自最多经销商的最多库存的网站。所以如果你想要选择，就来我们的网站吧。我们对这些汽车和经销商提供最多的信息，并按照对你最有帮助的方式进行排序。如果你愿意，我们还允许你在我们的网站上完成交易的大部分步骤。如果你不愿意，你不需要使用任何功能。你的堂兄这个周末要买车。实际上，谢谢。我在感恩节没见到我的堂兄。但是如果我见到了，就是这样。是的，你的堂兄可能完全不知道你在做什么。就像他在某个汽车公司工作一样。
Yeah, he stopped listening at, well, let me tell you. I love it. I wouldn't ask you if I car offer one question before we get there. You're in near Boston or what specific city are you in? You're in Boston. Our offices are in. Yeah.
是的，他在听到我说的时候停止了。我喜欢这个地方。在我们到之前，我能问一个问题吗？你在波士顿附近还是其他城市？你在波士顿。我们的办公室就在那里。对啊。
All right. Are you recruiting? Do you recruit Ivy League? I'm going to assume you some. Oh, for sure. We have a lot of colleges here. What's the value proposition for them? We're like, how do they view it? Do they view it similar to you? Like, are they like, oh, massive, massive addressable market. Let's go disrupt. Or like, what's that, you know, what is that kind of page? I'm just curious like what, what gets gravitates people to the company, especially in auto.
好的。你们在招聘吗？你们招收常春藤联盟的学生吗？我觉得你们应该会招收一些。哦，当然。我们这里有很多大学。对他们来说有什么价值主张？我们是怎么看待这个的？他们是否也觉得这是一个巨大的市场，可以颠覆传统。还是他们对此有什么特别的看法？我只是好奇，是什么吸引人们来到这家公司，尤其是在汽车行业。
I had a Barb Edson to see him out from CDK on the podcast a couple, a couple weeks ago or a month ago. And she said, similar, similar thing. She came from outside of the industry. And I started saying Barb, like why car business? And she gave actually a similar answer to you. Said, hey, big industry sort of felt like it was behind technologically coming in. So I'm curious how you're sort of attracting that talent or like, what's the value prop for them?
我在几周或一个月前的CDK播客上与巴布·埃德森见过面，她说了类似的事情。她也是来自行业外部的人。我问巴布，为什么选择汽车业？她其实给出了与你类似的答案。她说，汽车行业是一个庞大的行业，但在技术方面似乎有些滞后。因此，我很想知道你是如何吸引这些人才的，或者说对他们来说有何价值主张？
Yeah, it's a number of things. And we are near a number of great schools. And Boston is actually a really strong tech hub of some midsize pre IPO, a bunch of newly public. And that, you know, companies like Amazon and Facebook and Microsoft have really big presence here. But the value prop is it used to be that we were doing, quote, cool tech things related to search in the automotive industry.
是的，这是许多因素的综合。而且我们附近有很多优秀的学校。而波士顿实际上是一个很强大的技术中心，拥有一些中等规模的未上市公司和一些新上市公司。而且，你知道的，亚马逊、Facebook和微软在这里都有非常大的存在感。但价值主张在于过去我们一直在进行与汽车行业搜索相关的酷技术工作。
But it was really where we're a search company. Now I think it's elevated to, carbine process is still tougher than most people think it should be. And what we're trying to do, as I mentioned in my platform statement of how consumer shop finance buy and sell, what we're trying to do is actually solve a pain point that many people, dealers and consumers alike, agree is a more complicated transaction than it feels it needs to be. And so if you look at our mission and our vision, our mission is we help people reach their destination. And that could be our employees or our consumers or our dealers building business. Our vision is we want to be the number one digital destination where consumers and dealers can buy and sell cars with the most convenient selection and trust. And we believe we're well positioned to do that. And if you envision that, then we're actually doing something that can be pretty profound for consumers and for dealers and for the whole industry.
但它确实是我们一个搜索公司的地方。现在我认为它已经提升到了更高的水平，买卖二手车的流程比大多数人认为的要复杂得多。而我们正试图做的，正如我在我的平台声明中提到的，是解决许多人，包括经销商和消费者在内都认为比必要复杂的痛点。因此，如果你看看我们的使命和愿景，我们的使命是帮助人们实现他们的目标。这可能是我们的员工、消费者或者经销商建设业务。我们的愿景是成为消费者和经销商能够以最便利的选择和信任购买和销售汽车的头号数字目的地。我们相信我们有能力做到这一点。如果你展望未来，我们实际上正在为消费者、经销商和整个行业做一些相当深远的事情。
So we are a technology company, but interestingly, the fastest growing background of hires that we've hired this year was the dealer. Wow, I didn't expect that. Tell me more. Why is that? Because a big push that I've had since becoming CEO is to be more customer centric. And that means to both dealers and consumers. And I think our early day routes were more oriented toward consumer, because of the reasons I mentioned it was paid inclusion ecosystem before us. And we tried to make it more consumer friendly. And so we had and continue to have a great focus on the consumer.
所以我们是一家科技公司，但有趣的是，今年我们招聘的增长最快的背景是经销商。哇，我没想到。告诉我更多。为什么会这样？因为自从担任CEO以来，我一直在推动更加以客户为中心。这意味着对经销商和消费者都要如此。而我认为我们早期的路线更加面向消费者，因为像我提到的，我们之前是一个付费推广的生态系统。我们试图使其更加符合消费者的需求。因此，我们对消费者有着并将继续保持着极高的关注。
We did not have as much DNA from the dealer segment, number one. And then number two, as we're developing a lot more capabilities that will help dealers, like what I haven't mentioned yet is when a dealer subscribes for our listings package, we give them all sorts of insights and data and intelligence on the retail market. It helped them with pricing and merchandising and market trends and sourcing trends. And so as we got more broad there, we needed to understand the dealers better to understand what they want and what they need. And so when we have a salesperson come to us who had worked in the dealership for five years and they can help us understand the pain points better than almost any.
我们在经销商领域的DNA不如以前充足，这是第一点。第二，随着我们开发出更多能帮助经销商的功能，就像我还没有提到的，当经销商订阅我们的列表套餐时，我们会为他们提供各种关于零售市场的见解、数据和情报。这些帮助他们进行定价、商品营销、市场趋势和采购趋势。因此，当我们在这方面变得更加广泛时，我们需要更好地了解经销商，了解他们想要什么和需要什么。所以当有一位在经销店工作了五年的销售人员来找我们时，他们几乎比任何人都能帮助我们更好地理解痛点。
100%. Yeah, I think the worst thing as a dealer is a vendor that is just doesn't speak your language. I guess any business, but it is very frustrating because the business is, you know, it's retail business. And there's a lot of intricacies. Every dealership is somewhat different in their processes as well. And so I think it makes sense, right? You want to bring that competency. And I think it's really important also to speak the language of the dealer. I think that's another reason why, again, I'm relating to my experiences, but why a lot of dealers send me just info, like I don't ask for it, but they send it over because I feel like they trust that I speak the language and I understand. And I think that means a lot. So I think it's a smart move.
是的，我认为作为一个销售人员最糟糕的事情就是跟供应商语言不通。我想任何行业都会有这样的情况，但对于销售行业来说尤其令人沮丧，因为这是一个零售业务。并且这里有很多复杂的细节。每个经销商在其流程方面都有所不同。所以我觉得这是有道理的，对吧？你要提供这种能力。我还觉得能够说经销商所用的语言也非常重要。这也是为什么，再次以我的经验为例，很多经销商会给我发送一些信息，虽然我并没有要求，但他们会发送过来，我感觉他们信任我能够理解并且熟悉这些信息。我觉得这非常重要。所以我认为这是个明智的举动。
Yeah, and I think thank you. I think the last few feature, like major features that we've introduced, or even products we've introduced have come from dealers asking us for what products? Yeah, so one of them is it's called next best deal rating. So it's a weekly email that we send to any dealer customers that ask for it that tell them the lowest amount of money they would need to drop any of their units for in order to get it to the next best deal rating on car gurus. And in doing so, generate more leads for that car. And in some cases, it could be if you drop that car.
是的，我认为谢谢你的意思。我认为我们引入的最后一些主要功能，甚至是我们引入的产品，都是来自经销商对我们提出的产品需求。其中之一就是我们称之为“下一个最佳交易评级”的功能。这是一封每周发送给所有要求的经销商客户的电子邮件，告诉他们为了将他们的任何单位的下一个最佳交易评级降低所需的最低金额，以便在车辆猎亮网上产生更多潜在客户。在某些情况下，如果您降低了该汽车的价格，您可能会获得更多潜在客户。
Fourteen dollars, you're going to go from a good deal to a great deal and you're going to get a lot more traffic on it.
十四美元，你将从一个好的交易变成一个很好的交易，并且你将会获得更多的流量。
So so that's that's one that dealers asked us for. We delivered another one helps dealers understand their their relative share of leads in their market. And so if a dealer knows that they have three percent of the total used units in a in a DMA, and yet they're only getting two percent of leads, then that's an eye opening data point for them. And we help them understand how they can merchandise better to get their fair share.
所以，这是一个经销商要求我们提供的东西。我们提供了另一个帮助经销商了解他们在市场中相对领先的线索份额。因此，如果一个经销商知道他们在一个DMA中拥有总使用单位的3％，但只获得2％的线索，那对他们来说就是一个令人瞪目的数据点。我们帮助他们理解如何更好地进行商品推销，以获取他们的公平份额。
And then the last one's top dealer offer, which is a major product innovation for us that we just announced a few weeks ago, that that allows dealers to show an offer to purchase a consumer's car and have the consumer bring it to their dealership. So it's it's a compliment to our instant max cash off.
然后最后一个是我们的头号经销商提供的最新产品创新，我们几周前刚刚宣布的，它允许经销商向消费者展示一份购买其汽车的优惠，并让消费者将车辆带到他们的经销商处。所以它是我们即时最高现金折扣的补充。
Tell me about car offer. If you could just table set for what that is for anyone that doesn't know, but of course, you know, you bought 51% of the company's self or you was back. You recently purchased a remaining 49%. You know, why did you buy this company? Did you overpaid? If you underpay? Why did you just purchase to rest of it? You know, give us all the juice. All the juice.
告诉我关于汽车优惠的情况。如果你可以给那些不了解的人解释一下，但是当然，你知道的，你之前买下了该公司51%的股份，最近又购买了剩下的49%。你为什么要买下这家公司？你是否支付过高？是否支付过低？你为什么只购买了剩下的部分呢？把所有的细节都告诉我们。
Okay. So what car offer is? That's a big question and a lot of juice. I got it. Is it's a digital wholesale platform? It's different from most, if not all other digital wholesale platforms in so much as it does not follow a traditional auction model, but instead it uses what's called an instant trade platform that they innovated and built themselves.
好的。那么，汽车报价是什么？那是一个很重要的问题，也有很多亮点。我明白了。它是一个数字批发平台吗？它与大多数其他数字批发平台不同，因为它不遵循传统的拍卖模式，而是使用他们自己创新和构建的所谓即时贸易平台。
And what an instant trade matrix does is it automates dealer to dealer and consumer to dealer transactions nationwide effectively. And so it uses its technology to allow a dealer to say programmatically, these are the types of cars I would like to buy. This is how many I would like to buy. These are the prices I'm willing to pay for them. And I will and and when you find them, I can either, you know, have a model where I approve each one or a model where they just the transaction transpires and then the cars arrive.
而一家即时贸易矩阵的作用是有效地自动化国内的经销商对经销商、消费者对经销商的交易。它利用技术允许经销商以程序方式指定他们想要购买的汽车类型、数量和愿意支付的价格。当找到符合条件的车辆时，我可以选择逐个审批交易或者直接完成交易然后交付车辆。
Those implicit bids get placed on all inventory units of any dealer using car offer and car goods. So what that means is a dealer who has a hundred used cars that are a lot can see in our dashboard, for instance, the wholesale offers sitting on each of their units, which is pretty powerful. It's a pretty young business. It's probably about four and a half years old at this point. We acquired the, as you said, the first 51% of it about two years ago and had a deal structure that would have a lot that would have transacted the balance of it next summer.
那些隐含的出价会被放在使用汽车报价和汽车物品的任何经销商的所有库存单位上。所以这意味着一个拥有100辆非常多的二手车的经销商可以在我们的仪表板上看到每个单位上的批发报价，这非常有力。这是一个相当年轻的业务。在目前这个点上可能已经有四年半了。我们大约两年前获得了它的首个51%，并且有一个交易结构，计划在明年夏天完成其余的交易。
We accelerated that to acquiring it. We announced that we signed it. We signed it. We signed it. We signed it. We signed it. We signed it. We signed it. We signed an agreement to close it in December a couple of weeks ago.
我们加速了获取它的过程。我们宣布我们已经签署了它。我们签署了它。我们签署了它。我们签署了它。我们签署了它。我们签署了它。我们在几周前签署了一份在12月结束它的协议。
The reason we acquired it is because we just see huge potential in tying together wholesale all the way through to retail from a transaction standpoint and a data standpoint and a technology standpoint. And I won't jump into it now, but I'm happy to. If you want me to, we can come back to it. But the power of having that all together is significant for dealers especially, but it also helps consumers and it doesn't really exist anymore. It resembles, I think, an overall trend, which I've talked about, like the wholesale and retail blurring, the lines of wholesale retail. It used to be that auctions were auctions B2B, dealer to dealer and then retail was retail.
我们收购它的原因是因为我们在交易、数据和技术方面都看到了将批发与零售完全结合的巨大潜力。我现在不会详细介绍，但我很乐意这样做。 如果你希望，我们可以再回头来谈。但将这些所有元素结合在一起的力量对于经销商尤为重要，同时也有助于消费者，而它现在已经不存在了。我认为这类似一个总体趋势，就像批发和零售的界限模糊，曾经的拍卖是B2B的，即经销商之间的交易，而零售是零售。
And it feels like the world we've entered is simply where there's just several major players where the lines are being blurred and the marketplace is becoming more efficient where you just mentioned wholesale and retail can be one platform. And I can have a bid on any car every morning waiting for me. It's up to me to accept it or to also I can make a purchase that way.
感觉我们进入的世界就像只有几个主要参与者，界限模糊不清，市场越来越高效。就像你刚提到的，批发和零售可以成为同一平台。每天早上都会有一辆车可以让我竞价，我可以选择接受或者通过这种方式购买。
But to me, that seems to be the way moving forward here, right? Where you're saying wholesale and retail are one major system and the dealer is kind of work full funnel in that system.
但对我来说，这似乎是我们在这里前进的方式，对吗？你是说批发和零售是一个主要的系统，而经销商在这个系统中是一种全面参与者。
Yes, that is our thesis. And an example of that is that rather than a dealership saying, making educated gases on the types of cars that they should be sourcing, instead we can give them the intelligence soon that says, well, here are the retail trends in terms of demand and pricing and everything that's happening in the consumer. Here is your history as a dealership in terms of your success in selling different makes, violence, different types of cars. And here's what the wholesale trends are on all those dimensions right now. And therefore, we have a recommendation that says you should buy these five units because they will maximize your margin per unit and your turn time based on all the trends we're seeing in the value chain.
是的，这是我们的论点。举一个例子，与其说经销商根据他们认为合适的车型来采购，我们可以为他们提供相关信息，比如零售需求趋势、定价以及消费者行为等。还有你作为经销商在销售不同车型时的成功历史，以及每个维度上当前的批发趋势。基于我们在价值链中观察到的所有趋势，我们可以给出这样的建议：你应该购买这五个单位，因为它们将最大化你的单位毛利和周转时间。
And it's not going to be right 100% of the time. We can't predict the future, but it's going to be incredible intelligence that spans the entire value chain.
虽然它不会百分之百地正确，但我们无法预测未来，但它将成为覆盖整个价值链的令人难以置信的智能。
So you already own 51% of this business. Why did you decide to exercise the rest of the purchase recently? Well, we were planning to anyway, so it's really just moving it up. A few reasons. One, we wanted to accelerate that type of product collaboration that I just talked about. We've collaborated on a number of products like our Instamax Cash Offer product is a collaboration. And we think there's huge upside, and so we want to do more of it and we want to be speedy with it. And the second is just having full ownership allows more operational alignment between businesses. And in the old construct, they had a transaction date that was a finished line and they were understandably trying to optimize for that. And we're trying to build a business that is going to be multiples our size and be around for the next 100 years. And so alignment and operational alignment was the second reason. And the third is we hired Zach Hollowell, who had previously run Open Lane and previously run Manheim Digital, and he is now going to run Car Offer. And so he had started with us at CarGurus, and the opportunity to have him get in there sooner was, I think, appealing for all sons.
所以你已经拥有了这家公司的51％股权。为什么你决定最近行使剩下的购买权呢？嗯，我们本打算这么做的，所以只是提前实施而已。有几个原因。首先，我们想加速像我刚刚谈到的那种产品合作。我们合作过许多产品，比如我们的Instamax现金报价产品是一次合作。而且我们认为还有巨大的增长空间，所以我们想做更多的合作，并且希望速度快一些。其次，完全拥有的所有权可以使企业之间有更多的运营协调。在过去的架构中，他们有一个交易日期，这是一个完成线，他们可以理解地为此进行优化。而我们正在努力打造一个将成倍增长并存在100年的企业。因此，协调和运营协调是第二个原因。第三个原因是我们聘请了Zach Hollowell，他曾经管理过Open Lane和Manheim Digital，现在他将负责Car Offer。所以他在CarGurus已经与我们一起开始工作，并且让他尽早参与其中的机会对所有人来说都很有吸引力。
Did you have a chance to see, I did an emergency podcast on Hyundai and Amazon. Very splashing news in the industry. I'm really, really curious. So yeah, I mean news came out a week ago or so. Right away we did, I brought Andrew Wright, who was an upcoming chair for the dealer council for Hyundai. I mean, he shared his great insight. He was at the LA Auto Show. He really got up close and personal with the decision makers here. And I'm really curious to hear your take on this. I mean, what does this mean for your type of business? For anyone that hasn't listened to this episode, you know, it is a couple episodes before this. And you can see all about what Amazon and Hyundai put out there. But pretty much it was a very splashy release that Amazon is going to start selling new cars online. Hyundai is the first partner. Dealers will still fulfill these sales. How does that, you know, what's the first thing that goes through your head? First of all, where you see something like this, you know, what are you thinking, is this kind of threat to your business? And I guess secondly, like, you know, what is your overall reaction after you kind of, you know, have a chance to really think through the implications for the car business, for your company, for dealers? What are your thoughts on this entire thing?
你有机会看到了吗？我发布了一个关于现代和亚马逊的紧急播客。这在行业内掀起了轩然大波的消息。我真的非常好奇。所以，是的，这个新闻大概是在一周前发布的。我们立刻采访了安德鲁·赖特，他将成为现代汽车经销商委员会的主席。他分享了很有见地的观点。他参加了洛杉矶汽车展览会。他和这些决策者们有了很亲密的接触。我非常想听听你对此的看法。这对你的业务意味着什么？如果有人还没有听过这一集，可以回溯几集之前。你可以了解到亚马逊和现代汽车在这方面的所做所为。但基本上，亚马逊将开始在线销售新车。现代汽车是第一个合作伙伴。经销商仍然会履行这些销售。当你看到这样的消息时，你首先会想到什么？首先，你会认为这对你的业务构成了威胁吗？其次，你在彻底思考对汽车业务、对你的公司和对经销商的影响后，你的整体反应是什么？
It was splashy, maybe more splash than I think people at first thought. Lots of sizzle, not much. Right. I mean, you know, Amazon and Hyundai had been working together before and it just was not, it had not gotten much press. And this is clearly an extension of that, but it's not, I don't know, it's not a net new, totally new introduction.
这起事件引起了轰动，可能比人们最初想象的要大。有很多噱头，但实际推出的产品或方案却不多。对，我的意思是，你知道，亚马逊和现代之前就一直在合作，但这并没有引起太多媒体关注。这显然是此前合作的延续，但并不是一个完全全新的引进。
And anyway, my first reaction honestly is that it validates the consumer appetite to do more of the car purchase online. So to me, it says, and look, we've done a lot of research, so we have conviction in our own hypotheses, but this says that Amazon arguably has more resources and can do more research than we can. Also believes that consumers are increasingly ready to do more of the transaction or maybe even all of the transaction online. So that was my first reaction.
无论如何，我的第一反应真的是它证实了消费者更愿意通过在线购买更多汽车的观点。所以对我来说，这表明了，我们已经进行了很多研究，所以对我们自己的假设有信心，但这也表明亚马逊可能拥有更多资源和可以进行更多研究。他们也相信消费者越来越愿意通过在线完成更多交易，甚至可能是全部交易。所以这是我的第一反应。
My second reaction is it's new car focused. And we are principally a used car focused platform. And we have both new and used inventory. But most of the consumers on our platform are shopping for used cars.
我的第二个反应是它更注重新车。而我们主要是一个二手车为主导的平台。我们拥有新车和二手车的库存。但我们平台上大多数的消费者都在寻找二手车。
My next reaction was they also talked about how they have some capabilities, but don't have other capabilities. Yeah. What's up with that? Like, how do you, how do you make that announcement? Is this just like a lead generator? Like how can you do this without having a trade in platform and FMI platform? Well, that's, that, yeah, I mean, well, so this takeaway that I was, that I had was, it proves that it's hard, right? And so we've been working on these, these transaction capabilities for a few years now. And we know firsthand that it's hard to do. And so I think that was a little bit of confirmation that, and maybe an illustration for folks that an online transaction is, is anything but easy.
我接下来的反应是他们也谈到了他们有一些能力，但是没有其他能力。是啊，这是怎么回事？比如，你是怎么做这个公告的？这只是为了引起注意吗？你怎么在没有交易平台和FMI平台的情况下做到这一点？嗯，这就是...对，我是说...这给我留下了一个印象，证明这是困难的，对吧？我们已经几年来一直在研究这些交易能力。我们亲身经历知道这很难做到。所以我觉得这可能是对人们来说一个些许的确认，也许是一个说明，在线交易绝非易事。
And then I would say the final thought I had was curiosity around how they make this compelling for dealers. And I don't, that's not me saying I don't think they can. That's me just not knowing the details of, of what the body prop is, because as we think about introducing new capabilities to dealers, I mean, like the A number one thing we think about is ROI and like, why would a dealer want to do this? And we try to solve for that. And so that's just always top of mind for me. So I'm curious how they're looking at it.
然后我会说我最后的想法是对于他们如何让经销商觉得这个产品有吸引力感到好奇。并不是说我认为他们不能做到，只是我不知道具体的细节，比如这个产品的特点是什么，因为当我们考虑向经销商引入新能力时，我们首先想的就是投资回报率，以及为什么经销商会想要使用这个产品。我们努力解决这个问题。因此，我对他们的思考方式很感兴趣。
We call it, as I'm sure you've noticed one, the good old disk test does it sell cars? That's the dealership 101. You know, you have a marketing opportunity. There's a past a disk test. Exactly. And, and yeah, can you make money on it?
我们称之为，正如你肯定注意到的一样，这就是我们所说的传统的磁盘测试是否能卖车？这是最基础的经销商知识。你知道，这是一个营销机会，有过去的磁盘测试结果。确切地说，你能从中赚钱吗？
So, but I think, you know, to, to sum it all up, it was not, it felt incremental to us, but in a very positive way that says, yeah, the, the market is moving to doing more online and it's not going to be 50% tomorrow or even close. But having those capabilities, we think are important for all dealers to have. And so as we build out some of our transaction capabilities for dealers, it's really about how do we make the one store or the three store or the regional dealer group ready to compete with the larger nationwide or virtual dealer groups in the realm of online digital.
所以，不过我认为，你知道的，总结起来，这次经历对我们来说并不是巨大的飞跃，但它是以非常积极的方式让我们感到增量的，这表明市场正在朝着更多在线化发展，并不会在明天或很短的时间内达到50%。但我们认为所有经销商都应该具备这些能力。因此，当我们为经销商构建一些交易能力时，实际上是在思考如何让那些拥有一个或三个店铺，或者是区域经销商集团，能够在在线数字领域与更大规模的全国性或虚拟经销商集团竞争。
Right. On the topic of dealership marketing, if I'm a dealer listening right now, right? Like what, what changes for me when it comes to marketing over the next five years, just marketing strategy, what do you think are the biggest shifts that, you know, are going to occur and for, for dealers in general? I think transparency is just a theme that's been in the industry for the last, you know, eight years, 10 years and will continue. So the more transparency, the better, which I think will eventually really prove to be a disservice to those dealers you talked about earlier who have this sort of hidden costs baked in. So that's one theme.
对了。关于经销商营销的话题，如果我是一名现在正在听的经销商，对我来说有什么变化呢，就是在接下来的五年里，仅仅是营销策略方面，你认为最重要的转变是什么，对经销商来说一般都会发生哪些变化？我认为透明度是过去8年到10年来一直存在于该行业中的一个主题，而且将会继续存在。因此，透明度越大，效果越好，我认为最终会给你之前提到的那些隐藏成本的经销商带来不利影响。所以这就是一个主题。
I think another theme is dealers are realizing increasingly how buying smart is, is critical. I think multi touch attribution has got to get figured out. Explain it to me like I'm a third grader. I feel like a third grader with it sometimes. So it's the fact that the average consumer spends, you know, 60 to 90 days shopping for a car. And in the course of that time, they will use Google and they will use car and they will use a dealer, several dealer sites and they'll use, they'll go on Facebook for something else. And so how you attribute where that customer came from to you is a very difficult science. And it's not like, oh, well, the answer is, you know, acts. It's like, no, the answer is that consumer went on a journey. And so the answer is a very complicated formula that has a narrative around it.
我认为另一个主题是经销商越来越意识到购买得聪明是至关重要的。我认为多点归因必须要搞清楚。像对我解释得就像我是一个三年级的孩子一样。有时候我感觉自己就像一个三年级的孩子。所以事实上，普通消费者购车的时间大约是60到90天。在这段时间里，他们会使用谷歌，使用汽车网站，使用几个经销商的网站，并且他们还会上Facebook做其他事情。所以你如何归因这个顾客从哪里来的问题是一门非常困难的科学。并不是说，“哦，答案就是XX。”而是，答案是这个消费者经历了一个旅程。所以答案是一个非常复杂的公式，其中有一个故事性的叙述。
So this isn't unique to auto except auto has a much longer sales cycle than most other products. And so it's more pronounced in auto. And so we do a lot of that with our own audience building. But we also try to help dealers do that when we help them with attribution as well. And so I think back to your question, I think that's something that will have to make a lot of progress in order for dealers to have more confidence in knowing where to spend money.
因此，这并非仅限于汽车行业，只是汽车行业的销售周期要比大多数其他产品更长。所以在汽车行业中，这种情况更加明显。因此，我们在进行自己的受众建设时进行了很多努力。但是，我们也在帮助经销商进行归因时尽量提供帮助。所以回答你的问题，我认为这是一个需要取得进展才能让经销商更加有信心知道该在哪里投资的问题。
You mentioned transparency. That was the first thing. And I didn't want to cut you off because I want you to finish your three themes. And I couldn't agree more on that. Like I encourage dealers on just like educate, right? I think that if you, you know, you create content and you educate, I think that's another form of transparency. It's not pricing transparency. But again, I go back to like, I get, I get messages, DMs on social media all the time and people, Hey, I want to buy a car from you. And they don't know me. I never told them come buy a car for me, but it's because of the education.
你提到了透明度，这是第一点。我不想打断你，因为我想让你把你的三个主题都说完。对此我完全赞同。就像我鼓励经销商一样，就像教育一样。我认为，如果你创造内容并进行教育，那就是另一种形式的透明度。这不是定价透明度，但我一直认为，我常常在社交媒体上收到私信，人们说：“嘿，我想从你这里买辆车。”他们不认识我，我从来没有告诉过他们来我这里买车，但这是因为我的教育工作。
So I think on the, I think we kind of, we've already crossed the chasm of transparency and pricing. Like if you're not transparent and pricing nowadays, you're already behind. That's obvious. And I feel like the next, the next wave will be education, which I think is, you know, it's people want it, you know, it gets people to trust you. And so I feel like that's another big opportunity when people ask me at least for like, Hey, what's that way of like, you know, sweat equity, organic, how can I generate business? I say, educate, use your platforms, everything you're already doing, but like educate along the way. And it's not like this isn't novel in the dealership setting, right? Like ask any use car dealer, right? They educate their, their customer under credit and whatnot. And that helps you build trust. But I think ultimately just, you know, doing that across the kind of online platforms and whatnot, we'll go a very long way. Cause it just seems like we've entered that next phase where more and more content is just free. And that was not the case five years ago where you had a lot of gated stuff and also a lack of information. So.
我认为，我认为我们已经跨越了透明和定价的鸿沟。像现在如果你的定价不透明，你已经落后了，这是显而易见的。我感觉下一波将是教育，这是人们想要的，它能让人们信任你。所以我觉得这是另一个重大机遇，当人们问我关于像努力不懈、有机的方式，他们如何开展业务时，我会告诉他们，进行教育，利用你已经在做的各种平台，一路上给人们提供教育。这在经销商的环境中并不新奇，对吧？像问问任何二手车销售商，他们会教育他们的客户有关信贷等方面的知识，这有助于建立信任。但我认为，最重要的是在各种在线平台上做到这一点能够产生很长远的效果。因为现在似乎我们已经进入了更多内容免费的阶段。而这在五年前是不同的，当时你有很多需要付费才能获取的内容，也缺乏信息。
And I think my cheap two cents what we've found and has been proven, you know, again and again is the average consumer, most consumers aren't expecting or trying to get some magical bargain. They just want to get a fair enough deal and they want to feel good about the deal they got and feeling good about the deal they got 80% of that is just simply understanding why they got the deal they got. Like even in, even when consumers are trading in their car or selling a car for cash, they may end up at a different price than what they thought they would. But if they understand why it's a different price, then the NPS scores that we measure with them, net promoter scores are just as high as those who sold the car at the original price. So that's evidence to us that there's no right answer in a total overall transaction. There's no right number, perfect number. But if both sides feel like, if the buyer and the seller feel like they understood the information and they got a fair enough deal, then everybody's happy.
我认为，我们已经找到并证明了一些廉价的经验，你知道，再一次又一次证明了，普通消费者，大多数消费者并不期望或试图获得什么神奇的便宜货。他们只是想要得到一个还算公平的交易，并且他们想要对他们得到的交易感到满意，对于他们得到的交易感到满意的80％就是简单地理解他们为什么能得到这个交易。即使在消费者交易或以现金出售汽车时，他们可能会得到与他们期望的价格不同的价格。但是如果他们了解为什么会有不同的价格，那么我们对他们进行的NPS评分，即净推荐者评分，与那些以原价出售汽车的人一样高。所以对我们来说，这证明了在整个交易中没有正确答案。没有一个正确的数目，完美的数目。但是如果买方和卖方都觉得他们理解了信息并且获得了足够公平的交易，那么大家都会很满意。
I guess when we wrap up, I mean, I'm curious to know how you think about the future of car gurus. You know, I guess looking five years out, you know, what does the company look like? What's the change for car gurus, for dealers and consumers? You know, there are a lot of products and features, which I mentioned before, that we're just standing up now. Some of the transaction capabilities, some of the instant cash offer capabilities, so the things are doing a car offer. And we're standing them up now in kind of siloed ways. Like they're not all because there's so many are so new. They're not all fully tied together seamlessly. And five years from now, I'm confident five years a long time. I'm confident that they will be much more seamless and personalized and predictive for both consumers and dealers. So rather than saying, you know, today there's recommendation engines like I see you're shopping for a car. Would you also like to sell a car, you know, just being much more in the moment, giving the options of car selling processes to put together a deal for a consumer. So that is, I think, going to be a big step forward in creating satisfaction for, again, both buyers and sellers.
我猜当我们结束时，我的意思是，我很想知道你对汽车顾问未来的看法。你知道，在五年后，公司会是什么样子？对于汽车顾问、经销商和消费者会有什么变化？如我之前所提到的，有很多产品和功能正在刚刚兴起。其中一些是交易能力，一些是即时现金报价能力，以及一些与购车报价有关的功能。现在我们正在单独地推出这些功能，因为它们中的很多都是很新的，所以并没有完全无缝地连接在一起。但我相信五年后，我有信心，五年的时间是很长的时间，它们将会更加无缝、个性化和预测性，同时适用于消费者和经销商。所以，不再像现在这样说，今天有推荐引擎，比如看到你在选车，你是否也想卖车，而是更加即刻地提供卖车流程的选择，帮助消费者达成交易。我认为，这将是满足买家和卖家需求的一大步。
I think data tying wholesale all the way through to retail like we talked about. So the days of trying to guess what a dealer should do or a consumer should do, I think they're going to be much more pinpointed. I believe our brand will be much more ubiquitous. You know, the auto market is a fairly crowded market. And many of the companies have the work car in them, we're one of them. And so if you talk to most consumers, they can name six companies that have car in them, but not necessarily understand the difference between them.
我认为数据将从批发一直延伸到零售，就像我们之前讨论过的那样。所以试图猜测经销商或消费者应该怎么做的日子，我认为它们将更加具体。我相信我们的品牌将变得更加无处不在。你知道，汽车市场是一个相当拥挤的市场。很多公司中都有“car”的字样，我们也是其中之一。因此，如果你和大多数消费者交谈，他们可以说出有“car”字样的六家公司的名字，但不一定能理解它们之间的区别。
So I think we're going to become much more ubiquitous as a brand because buyers and sellers will be using us for so much more and will hopefully be bringing this seamless experience. And then I think that we're going to have transaction capabilities that solve for more and more corner cases. Like you know, as well as anyone deals can get very complicated. If there's existing loan or they need new financing or a, you know, tough credit score or there's a tough trade in. And so there are very few just middle of the fairway deals and where a lot of, where we're starting and a lot of folks are starting with digital retail is middle of the fairway. And so I think five years from now I'm confident we'll have expanded out to handle most types of transactions need.
所以我认为我们的品牌会变得更加无处不在，因为买家和卖家将会更加广泛地使用我们，并希望能带来这种无缝体验。然后，我认为我们将会有更多交易能力，解决越来越多的特殊情况。比如，你知道的，交易可能变得非常复杂。如果有现有贷款或者他们需要新的融资，或者是信用评分较低，或者是有困难的交易。所以真正符合标准的交易很少，而我们和很多人一样开始的是数字零售中的标准交易。所以我相信，在未来五年内，我们将有足够的能力处理大多数类型的交易需求。
Jason Treveson, thanks so much for coming on. If anyone wants to get in touch with you, obviously they can go to CarGurus.com. Any other ways to get in contact with you? They can hit me up on LinkedIn.
Jason Treveson，非常感谢你的光临。如果有人想与你联系，可以去CarGurus.com。还有其他联系方式吗？他们可以在LinkedIn上找到我。
Let's do it. Jason, thanks so much for coming on. This was great. Thank you very much. Great to be here. All right. Hope you enjoyed that episode. Please give the podcast a rating. Consider subscribing to the show and check the show notes for links to what we talked about. Thanks for tuning in. I'll see you guys next time.
我们来做吧。Jason，非常感谢你的参与，这真的很棒。非常感谢。很高兴能来到这里。好了，希望你们喜欢这一集。请给这个播客一个评分。考虑订阅这个节目，并检查节目说明中关于我们谈论内容的链接。感谢你们的收听。我下次见。