The Secret Weapon to Dealership Efficiency | Carmatic
发布时间 2024-01-18 10:00:26 来源
Is it really possible to sell cars as fast as ordering McDonald's? This man thinks so. Today I'm speaking with David Dom, co-founder and CEO at Carmatic, a tech platform that empowers dealerships to provide fast and accurate car payments to car shoppers. We discuss solving dealership choke points and inefficiencies, providing payment transparency to car shoppers, lessons from building and selling an actual video game, and much more.
真的可以像点麦当劳一样快速卖出汽车吗？这个人认为是可能的。今天我们邀请了Carmatic的联合创始人兼首席执行官David Dom进行访谈。Carmatic是一个技术平台，帮助经销商为汽车购车者提供快速准确的汽车付款服务。我们讨论了解决经销商瓶颈和低效问题、向汽车购车者提供付款透明度、从构建和销售实际视频游戏中所得的经验教训等等。
Don't forget to click subscribe so you never miss an episode. 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.
不要忘记点击订阅，这样您就不会错过任何一集了。大家好，我是汽车经销商。您正在收听的是汽车经销商的播客，这是我为您提供最客观透明的有关汽车市场的见解的努力。
But before we get into the show, this episode is brought to you by Car's Commerce. The platform is simplified everything about buying and selling cars, including the quote unquote follow-up. Let me explain. Dealers, fast and effective follow-up is crucial for converting leads in customers. But here's the problem. 40% of shoppers report that they are not getting timely or helpful responses from dealerships. This is a huge problem because your own team could be leaving four out of every 10 sales opportunities on the table.
在我们进入节目前，本集节目由汽车商务赞助。这个平台简化了买卖汽车的所有事情，包括所谓的“跟进”。让我解释一下。对于转化潜在客户来说，经销商迅速和有效地跟进非常重要。但问题是，40%的购车者报告说他们没有得到及时或有帮助的经销商回应。这是一个巨大的问题，因为你自己的团队可能在销售机会中错失四分之一的机会。
Car's Commerce makes it simple to measure and improve your follow-up performance. A cars.com experience report tracks the percentage of leads your teams responding to, and how customers rate those responses. While dealer inspires retailing technology enables your team to quickly text follow-ups with personalized financing options to make the most out of every opportunity. To learn more about how you can measure and improve your team's follow-up performance, go to carscommerce.ink.x experience or click the link in the show notes below.
Car's Commerce使您能够简单地衡量和提高您的后续跟进表现。cars.com的体验报告会跟踪您的团队回应客户的领先机会的百分比以及客户对这些回应的评价。同时，Dealer Inspires零售技术使您的团队能够快速通过个性化融资选择发送短信跟进，以充分利用每一个机会。要了解更多关于如何衡量和提高团队的后续跟进表现的信息，请访问carscommerce.ink.x体验或点击下方的链接。
I took a look at your background, saw that you started your career in gaming, then found your way into cars, which I found fascinating because it's just not a trajectory you typically see. I'd love to start if you can give us your background and really take us from your early in your career what you worked on because I want to lead into present day from there.
我查了一下你的背景，发现你的职业生涯是从游戏行业开始的，然后你又进入了汽车行业，我觉得这非常有趣，因为这并不是一条常见的发展轨迹。如果可以的话，我很想了解一下你的背景，并从你职业生涯初期开始介绍一下你做过的工作，因为我想从那里引入到现在的情况。
For sure. Yeah, I mean, I guess looking at back in my career is like three buckets. I actually first started my career in investment banking and private equity. I've spent eight years in New York focused on advisory, M&A, PE investment, which I think was foundational for what I was going to do. But I realized very quickly I'm a builder, not a banker. I wanted to impact change and solve real problems. That's really what it was.
当然。是的，我的意思是，我认为回顾我的职业生涯可以分成三个阶段。实际上，我最初在投资银行和私募股权方面开始了我的职业生涯。我在纽约待了八年，专注于咨询、并购和私募股权投资，我认为这是我后来所从事工作的基础。但是我很快意识到，我更适合成为一个创造者，而不是一个银行家。我想要影响变革并解决实际问题。那才是我真正追求的。
So I moved back to Chicago where I'm originally from New York and launched my first startup. And guess what? It failed. But I applied those learnings to my next startup, which happened to be in the gaming space. Why gaming? I've always had a passion for solving problems. I'm a gamer. I'm not a hardcore mass multiplayer online gamer. I'm just one of the games we ended up building. More of a casual gamer.
所以，我搬回了我最初来自纽约的地方芝加哥，并且创建了我的第一家创业公司。猜猜怎么样？它失败了。不过，我将这些经验应用到了我接下来的创业项目中，而这个项目恰巧是与游戏相关的。为什么选择游戏？因为我一直对解决问题保持着激情。我是一个游戏玩家，但并不是那种高强度的大规模多人在线游戏玩家，我只是我们最后设计的游戏的其中一位。更多是休闲游戏玩家。
Don't lie to us, David. Don't lie to us. Well, yeah, I've got two kids now, but I don't even touch games. But yeah, there was, we actually, our first game was tackling the fantasy sports base. And for me, I saw myself as a personal pain point. I didn't have the time to devote to being a fantasy player. And so we uncovered this opportunity, this huge market of sports enthusiasts that wanted to participate in fantasy, but they just ended up the time.
不要对我们撒谎，大卫。不要对我们撒谎。嗯，是的，我现在有两个孩子了，但我甚至不碰游戏。但是，我们实际上推出的第一个游戏是针对幻想体育基础的。对我来说，我认为自己是一个个人的痛点。我没有时间投入到成为一个幻想运动玩家中。因此，我们发现了这个机会，这个巨大的体育爱好者市场希望参与幻想运动，但他们却没有时间。
So we created more of a session based fantasy sports experience. And that was really kind of the foray into gaming for me. But looking back on that experience, I think you made mistakes as an entrepreneur. I think first time entrepreneurs, it's tough to get it right that first go around. And so we made all the mistakes typical first time founders make. We scaled the team too quickly. We raised too much money all through the lens of not really understanding what product market fit is and product market fit.
所以我们创造了更多基于会话的幻想体育体验。那真的是我进入游戏行业的开始。但回想起那段经历，我认为作为企业家我犯了一些错误。我觉得第一次创业者很难在第一次尝试中做得很对。所以我们犯了所有典型的第一次创始人错误。我们过早扩大了团队规模，筹集了太多的资金，但并没有真正理解产品市场契合以及产品市场契合的意义。
For those that have started companies, it's kind of like this holy grail. You want to identify a market that has a need. And ultimately, you want to build a product that satisfies that need. That's the easiest definition of achieving product market fit. And so scaling that gaming experience without really understanding product market, we're getting close. But you're learning along the way.
对于那些创办公司的人来说，寻找产品市场契合度就像是追求圣杯一样。你希望找到一个有需求的市场，最终建立一个满足这种需求的产品。这就是实现产品市场契合度最简单的定义。所以，在没有真正理解产品市场的情况下扩张游戏体验，我们是在接近目标。但你会在这过程中不断学习。
And I think that's one of the big takeaways for me personally. When I look back at my background and my experiences, I think a great founder really has to check as her ego at the door, embrace failure, and then apply those learnings to what they're doing. And that's kind of how we approached at least back in the day, the experience of my gaming startups. We were fortunate enough to have a patient set of investors that really were investing in myself, my team, our vision, and the market opportunity.
我认为这对我个人来说是一个重要的领悟。回顾我的背景和经历，我认为一个优秀的创始人真的必须将自己的自我放置一边，接受失败并将这些经验运用到自己的工作中。这就是我在游戏创业初期的经历。我们很幸运地拥有一批有耐心的投资者，他们真正投资的是我个人、我的团队、我们的愿景以及市场机会。
So we quickly pivoted within gaming to a slightly different product. And we did everything right. We scaled the team, we kept it lean, and we raised just enough money to get to that next kind of validation point.
所以，我们迅速在游戏领域转型为一个稍有不同的产品。而且我们做得一切都是正确的。我们扩大了团队规模，保持了高效运作，并筹集了足够的资金以达到下一个验证点。
What was the game? The game was called Forge. And Forge, it was really going after this market. We can geek out on this for hours. But in a nutshell, it was going after this mass multiplayer online market. So popular games like World of Warcraft, League of Legends, a billion dollar enterprises. And we uncovered this niche within gaming.
这个游戏是什么？这个游戏叫Forge。而Forge，它真的在追逐这个市场。我们可以花几个小时来热衷于这个话题。但简而言之，它在追逐这个大规模多人在线游戏市场。像《魔兽世界》、《英雄联盟》这样的热门游戏，都是千亿美元的企业。而我们揭示出了游戏领域中的这个细分市场。
My partner, co-founder and CTO, was actually a world champion, World of Warcraft player. And so we uncovered this niche. Yeah, I mean, his game design, his ethos around game design was just tremendous. Wait, so you both went from gaming together into the automotive world? No, no, no. He stayed in gaming. I went into the automotive world after we exited Forge. But in the studio, it was called Thargale Games.
我的合作伙伴，共同创始人和首席技术官，实际上是一位《魔兽世界》的世界冠军选手。因此我们发现了这个利基市场。是的，我的意思是，他的游戏设计和关于游戏设计的理念非常了不起。等等，所以你们俩从一起玩游戏转入了汽车行业？不，不，不。他留在了游戏行业，而在我们退出Forge之后，我进入了汽车行业。而在工作室中，我们叫它Thargale Games。
But what we uncovered really was this niche within the mass multiplayer online gaming vertical. And we focused solely on that particular style of gameplay. And that was, gamers were calling out for that. And it didn't exist at the time. And that's really kind of looking back, we failed along the way to get there and eventually figured it out.
但是我们真正发现的是大型多人在线游戏中的这个小众领域。我们专注于那种特定的游戏玩法。而且，游戏玩家们正在寻求这种玩法，但当时还不存在。回想起来，我们在努力实现这个目标的过程中失败了，直到最终找到了方法。
And I think, I get asked a lot, what makes a great founder? And again, going back to that point, you got to check your ego at the door and you got to really be ready to learn from your mistakes. Yeah, so you said that twice now. So I have to ask, what was that mistake for you? Right? Like where at what point did you really check your ego? You're like, I'm like, this is the one.
我认为，我经常被问到，什么样的创始人才是伟大的？再次回到这一点，你必须把自己的自我放在一边，真正准备从自己的错误中学习。是的，你已经说过两次了。所以我必须问，对于你来说，这个错误是什么？在什么时候你真正意识到自己要放下自我了？
Well, I think, you know, as a founder, you know, you come up with this vision, and you want to solve a problem. But I think sometimes you get jaded a bit and biased. And you focus more on the solution than the problem itself. At times, you don't really understand the market opportunity, the market need. And for us, you know, going after a quick, quick aside, so that first game we build, the fantasy sports game, it was a phenomenal game. It was sexy. We had sponsors, we had, you know, the big networks that wanted to back it because on paper, in theory, it was phenomenal.
嗯，我认为，你知道，作为创始人，你提出一个愿景，想要解决一个问题。但我觉得有时候你会变得有点厌倦和有偏见。你会更关注解决方案而非问题本身。有时候，你实际上并不了解市场机会和市场需求。对我们来说，你知道，我们追求一个快速的概念，就是我们最初开发的那个幻想体育游戏，它是一款非常棒的游戏。它令人着迷。我们有赞助商，有一些大型网络公司想要支持它，因为从理论上来说，它是非常出色的。
But it wasn't really one solving a real pain point for gamers. And two, it was very limited in terms of its ability to scale. I required you to log in and play alongside a real time broadcast sport. That was our niche. But at the same time, not a lot of people can devote hours at a time to play a game alongside a live event. And that was kind of our Achilles heel.
但是实际上，它并没有真正解决游戏玩家的痛点。其次，它在可扩展性方面非常有限。它要求你登录并同时玩一个实时广播的比赛。这就是我们的特色所在。但同时，不是很多人能够连续几个小时玩游戏和观看一个现场事件。这也是我们的致命弱点。
You know, going back to what really makes a great founder, it's living. You know, there's a great book, again, Reddit, The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horvitz is a famous entrepreneur and investor now. And there's one passage that always stuck out for me. And it was something along the lines of, you know, that startup CEO is too busy fighting the enemy to read books written by consultants that have never managed a fruit stand. And it's so true. I lived it.
你知道的，回归到真正成就伟大创业者的东西，那就是实践。你知道的，有本很棒的书，再次提到Reddit，本·霍夫维茨是一位著名的企业家和投资人。在书中，有一个段落一直让我印象深刻。大致意思是，那些创业公司的首席执行官忙于与敌人搏斗，无暇阅读那些从未经营过水果摊的顾问写的书籍。这是如此真实。我以亲身经历体会到了这一点。
You know, I had to put payroll at one point on my personal credit card. I had to take half my company into a room one day and let them know that that was their last day because we had to survive, you know, bleeding survival at all costs. And you can't read about that in a book or learn about it in business school. You have to live it.
你知道的，有一次我不得不用个人信用卡支付工资。有一天，我不得不把公司一半的员工召集到一个房间告诉他们那是他们的最后一天，因为我们必须生存下去，不惜一切代价。而这些经历是你无法从书本上获得或者在商学院里学到的，你必须亲身经历才能理解。
And so that's kind of how I've approached everything I've done in my career, and especially as we embark on a built up, a dramatic, it's really leveraging those learnings and doing things the right way. And I think it's one thing to be able to kind of have that transparency and look back on your experience as a founder.
这就是我在职业生涯中对待所有事情的方式，尤其是在我们开始进行戏剧性的发展时，要充分利用这些经验，并以正确的方式去做事情。我认为能够透明地回顾自己作为创始人的经历是一件很重要的事情。
But equally important, that's the tip of the iceberg. You have to surround yourself with that initial core team from day one. And that's exactly what we've done also here. Our magic is our team is phenomenal. I've never worked with a better team. And I'm going to and we're going to get a lot into that because I have ton of questions on how you build this team.
同样重要的是，这只是冰山一角。从第一天开始，你必须与初始核心团队紧密合作。而这正是我们在这里所做的。我们的团队是非凡的，这就是我们的魔力所在。我从未与如此出色的团队合作过。我们将会深入讨论这个问题，因为我有很多关于如何建立这个团队的问题。
But before we get there, so here's what I'm really interested in. You were the chief product of Sarah cars.com. Right? How in the hell do you go from gaming to being the CPO at an automotive tech media company? How does that work? It's crazy. Right?
在我们继续之前，我实在是太感兴趣了。你是Sarah cars.com的首席产品官，对吧？你是怎么从游戏行业转到成为一家汽车科技媒体公司的CPO的？这怎么可能？太疯狂了，对吧？
Well, I'm just I was just curious when I saw this, I said like, like, why, right? What what drove that? So go ahead.
嗯，我只是好奇当我看到这个时，我说像是，为什么，对吧？是什么驱使这样的事情发生呢？所以请继续。
Yeah, after my last startup, I really didn't have an epiphany for that next massive problem that needed something. And I'm not going to go, you know, craft a solution that doesn't really have a real market need and a problem attached to it. I am a huge car enthusiast, huge.
是的，在我上一次创业之后，我真的没有对下一个需要解决的重大问题有所领悟。而且我也不会去创造一个没有真正市场需求和相关问题的解决方案。我是一个非常热衷于汽车的爱好者，非常热衷。
And at the time, I had a passion for two different verticals for two different reasons, automotive and insurance. And it turns out that a friend of mine who'd been CTO of cars.com mentioned to me that, you know, I should go talk to the folks over cars that are doing cool things.
当时，出于不同的原因，我对汽车和保险这两个垂直领域都有着浓厚的兴趣。然后，我的一个朋友曾经担任过cars.com的首席技术官，他向我提到，我应该去和那些正在做很酷事情的cars.com的人们交谈一下。
So as soon as I met with the leadership team over there and Alex better, I was hooked. You know, I saw where Alex wanted to take cars, commerce now, it was cars.com at the time. And I wanted to be a part of it. And so I think what I brought to cars was that scrappy entrepreneurial mindset. And of course, it doesn't hurt that I have a passion for the space in the industry.
所以当我与那里的领导团队和Alex更加接触后，我就被吸引住了。你知道的，我看到了Alex想要发展汽车和商业方面的东西，当时是cars.com。我想要成为其中的一员。所以我认为我为cars.com带来的是那种有朝气的创业思维。当然，我对这个行业也有浓厚的兴趣，这也是一个有利条件。
So, you know, within a couple days of meetings with that team, I said, listen, I want to be a part of this. And I joined the organization from there. That was my foray into auto. I guess that's now eight years ago, which in this industry, I'm still considered green in a newbie. You know, the average 10 years is decades. But I also think that lends me a slightly different perspective, a fresh perspective, I can kind of challenge the status quo in auto. And it's certainly serving well.
所以你知道，在与那个团队会面的几天后，我说，听着，我想成为其中的一员。从那时起，我加入了这个组织。那是我进入汽车行业的开端。我想现在已经过去了八年，在这个行业里，我仍然被认为是一个新手。你知道，平均十年就像是几十年那么久。但我也认为这给了我一种稍微不同的观点，一种新鲜的观点，我可以对汽车行业的现状发起挑战。这肯定对我有好处。
So fast forwarding to karmatic, which is what you're working on now. What insights did you glean from cars, right? Because here you're managing, you know, the product for one of the largest, you know, automotive tech and media companies serving thousands of dealers, you clearly see a lot you're exposed to a pun. What were the insights that you gleaned that led you to, you know, ideating karmatic and what you're working on today?
现在，快进到你现在正在致力于的karmatic项目。你从汽车方面获得了哪些洞见呢？因为在这里，你管理着一个最大的汽车科技和媒体公司之一的产品，为数以千计的经销商提供服务，显然你见多识广，接触了很多。那些洞见是什么，让你有了构思karmatic以及你今天所从事的工作的想法？
Yeah, I think being a part of cars, Congress was a fantastic experience. Why? Because you kind of had a front row C to a two sided marketplace in auto. So you got to see the consumer pain points, but also the dealer pain points. And I think that's, that's where I think, you know, there's a lot of folks that want to penetrate out with the new idea. And you're either focused on solving consumer problems or solving dealer problems. We got to see both sides. And I think for me, the big aha, and then you marry that with just my passion as a car enthusiast. I mean, I was on cars.com years before I joined the organization, I was on their daily as a consumer. And there's just a lot of pain points, a lot of friction as a as a as a shocker.
是的，我认为成为汽车界的一部分对我来说是一个很棒的经历。为什么呢？因为你可以近距离观察汽车市场上的双边交易。所以你可以看到消费者的痛点，也能看到经销商的痛点。在我看来，这是许多人希望通过创新想法渗透进来的地方。你可以专注于解决消费者问题或经销商问题。我们可以看到两面。对我来说，最大的启发是结合了我作为汽车爱好者的热情。在加入这个组织之前，我多年来一直是cars.com的消费者，不断遇到各种痛点和阻力。
And I think that was, you know, one big aha was transparency. You know, it there's very limited transparency. It's very difficult to navigate that shopping experience in auto when you're looking for a vehicle online. So, so looking back at my car's experience, it was really all about how do we balance the needs of the consumer, but also knowing that we have to enable the supply side, the local dealers, with the right technology to be the ultimate advocate for their, for their consumers, their consumers.
我认为那个非常重要的领悟是透明度。你知道的，透明度非常有限。当你在网上寻找一辆汽车时，很难找到适合的购物体验。所以，回想起我的购车经历，真正重要的是如何平衡消费者的需求，同时也要让供应方（当地经销商）能够借助正确的技术成为他们消费者的最佳代言人，他们消费者的最佳代言人。
And what were the pain points for the dealers? Like, what were the biggest pain points that you saw? I think there's a lot of inefficiency at the back of house. Look, ultimately dealers, I think there's a misconception too. There's this lack of trust. Look, you've got your bad actor dealers, but those are a minority. And it's unfortunate that those kind of muddy the waters from the consumers perspective. But at the end of the day, they want to build that trust. They want to build that transparency. Ultimately, I think they don't have the right tools to do that effectively. It's disconnected. It's siloed. And we've made huge strides.
车行面对了哪些问题？比如说，你看到了哪些最大的问题？我认为，在后台操作方面存在很多低效问题。看，最终，我认为车行也存在一个误解。这里缺乏信任。当然，你们有一些不道德的车商，但他们只是少数。令人遗憾的是，这些车商会从消费者的角度来说搞混了事情。但归根结底，他们想要建立信任。他们想要建立透明度。我认为，他们没有正确的工具来有效地做到这一点。现在的情况是分散的，封闭的。我们已经取得了重大进展。
It's funny. I was I was recently talking with one of our VCs and they flat out asked me what I've started, dramatic before COVID. And I think long and hard about that. And ultimately, I said, no, I think pre COVID, one, I mean, consumer expectations have been evolving. Everyone's doing a lot more digitally online than they were in the past. But most important, you got to have the dealers willing to kind of embrace this new way of operating. And COVID ushered in this kind of behavioral change on the part of the dealer. They had to adopt digital solutions because their doors were shut for a couple of years. Coming out of COVID, now I think a lot of dealers realize that they're a lot more efficient. These digital solutions actually make them better at what they do on a daily basis. And they're introducing a hell of a lot more efficiency, transparency. And the end result is much higher consumer customer satisfaction.
太有趣了。最近我和我们的一位风险投资者聊天，他直截了当地问我在COVID之前都开展了些什么戏剧性的事情。我认真思考了很久。最终我说，没有，在COVID之前，我认为首先，消费者的期望正在不断发展。每个人在网上的数字化活动比之前多得多。但最重要的是，经销商必须愿意接受这种新的经营方式。COVID引发了经销商行为上的改变。因为他们的门关了几年，他们不得不采用数字解决方案。走出COVID，现在很多经销商意识到他们更高效了。这些数字化解决方案实际上使他们在日常工作中更出色。他们引入了更多的效率、透明度。最终结果是更高的消费者满意度。
So, you know, looking back at the experience at cars and then coming into karmadic, one thing we were really laser focused on and our leadership team, we might co-founder Ken, we come from cars, commerce, true car, auto trader. So, we had that marketplace experience, but we also said, it's very difficult to tackle two problems at the same time. Let's focus on the dealer. We're a B2B sales enablement platform and that's on purpose. Okay.
所以你知道的，回顾一下在汽车行业的经验，然后转入karmadic，有一件事我们真的非常专注于，我们的领导团队，也就是我们的联合创始人Ken，我们来自汽车、商业、TrueCar、汽车交易等行业。所以，我们拥有市场经验，但我们也意识到，同时解决两个问题非常困难。所以，我们选择专注于经销商。我们是一家面向商业销售的平台，这是有意为之的。好的。
And this was my next question. Like, what is karmadic? So go ahead. Yeah.
这是我接下来的问题。就是说，什么是karmadic（返因的）？请继续。是的。
So karmadic is it's a dealer centric sales enablement platform. Okay. What does that mean? Yeah. Sounds like a lot of fluff, right? What the hell does that mean? Right. So at the end of the day, we anchor on the ability to instantly shop by feature and payment. So dealers are still in control of the sale. Our platform uses their criteria, their parameters, their payment configurations. And we're literally crunching all the numbers and presenting accurate monthly loan release payments in real time, pretty much for anyone with the dealership to then position and leverage for their end user, the vehicle shop.
所以karmadic是一个以经销商为中心的销售增效平台。好的。这是什么意思？是的。听起来像是空洞的废话，对吗？到底是什么意思？对的。所以说到底，我们的核心能力在于通过功能和付款能力来进行即时购物。所以经销商仍然掌握销售的控制权。我们的平台使用他们的标准、参数和付款配置。我们会实时地计算出所有数字，并提供准确的每月贷款支付信息，几乎适用于任何拥有经销店的人，以便他们为最终用户（购车者）提供位置和优势。
Okay. So break that down for us for a second. What's the current experience today as you know it? And how are you changing that experience? Right. So the current experience is broken in our opinion. So typically, let's talk about kind of the way car shopping works, right? And I'm not talking about a Tesla model model that's going to execute. So we're talking about I'm a consumer shopper. I'm interested in buying a vehicle. My first step is online. Very few people are just walking inside and seeing to a dealership and starting the process. Correct. I agree.
好的。所以请给我们解释一下。就您所知，当前的体验是怎样的？您是如何改变这种体验的呢？是的。在我们看来，当前的体验是有问题的。让我们谈谈购车的方式，对吧？我指的不是那些能自动执行的特斯拉车型。我们谈的是我作为一名消费者购物者的情况。我对购买一辆车感兴趣。我的第一步是在网上。很少有人只是走进一个经销商店铺开始购车流程。正确。我同意。
So I'm online. Maybe I start in Google. I do a Google search. Maybe I go to one of the big four marketplaces and I start my search. At the end of the day, though, what I'm doing is I'm looking for information. I'm looking to get my questions answered. Typically today, that starts with a lead, a digital lead in the CRM. So I'm on a marketplace. I'm in Google. I'm interested in a particular vehicle or maybe I'm just interested in learning more about what's going to meet my needs. I submit that lead that lead gets sent to the CRM. Of course, you've got your walk ins and people calling in the phone up. But those are not the majority of leads. The leads are digital.
所以我在上网。也许我从谷歌开始。我进行了谷歌搜索。也许我去了四大市场之一，开始我的搜索。然而，到了一天结束时，我实际上在寻找信息。我想要答案解决我的问题。通常今天，这始于一个潜在客户，在客户关系管理系统中的一个数字潜在客户。所以我在一个市场上。我在谷歌上。我对某辆特定的车辆感兴趣，或者也许我只是对更多关于如何满足我的需求的了解感兴趣。我提交那个潜在客户，然后那个潜在客户会被发送到客户关系管理系统。当然，你也有走进来的人和打电话进来的人。但那些不是大多数潜在客户。潜在客户是数字化的。
Today, the dealership has a CRM that manages all those leads. That first touch point is typically either a business development rep, if I've got a centralized business development center, or if I don't, it's a salesperson. I'm in the CRM and that's my first interaction with the customer. Today, they don't have a toolkit to bring that customer further down the phone. So today, what they're doing is they're picking up the phone and that lead has a phone number and maybe a vehicle of interest. They're calling that consumer and saying, what can you come in for an appointment? That's where the process starts today.
今天，汽车经销商拥有一套客户关系管理系统（CRM），负责管理所有这些潜在客户信息。第一个接触点通常要么是一个商务发展代表（如果我有一个集中的商务发展中心），要么是一个销售人员（如果没有中心）。我在CRM中，这是我与客户的第一次互动。今天，他们没有一个工具包来进一步引导客户通过电话。所以今天，他们拿起电话，这些潜在客户有一个电话号码，可能会有感兴趣的车辆。他们致电给消费者，询问可以预约什么事项？这就是今天的流程开始的地方。
Everything is done online and the consumer's looking for all this information before they make the decision to spend hours at the dealership. Correct. And why is that the current process? I think it's a couple different things. One, dealers don't have the software and the toolkit to be able to do that needs analysis in real time online. The other piece of that is, you do have this kind of older school way of thinking, again, going back to pre-COVID, I think a lot of dealers felt that one offering payment transparency left control in the hands of the consumer, not the dealer. So they wanted to get the consumer to come in, spend those hours at the dealership, only to then go down the funnel and present them with payment affordability and availability.
一切都在网上完成，消费者在决定花费几个小时在经销商那里之前，都会寻找所有这些信息。没错。为什么现在的流程是这样的呢？我认为有几个原因。首先，经销商没有软件和工具包，能够实时在线进行需求分析。另一个原因是，你们有这种旧时代的思维方式，在COVID之前，我认为很多经销商都觉得，只提供付款透明度，就让掌握在消费者手中而不是经销商手中，所以他们希望消费者到店里花费那几个小时，然后再进一步进行付款可负担性和可用性的呈现。
But what happens in that process, and look, the stats are real, the average time spent at a dealership even today is five hours. Once I've decided that I'm ready to come in, that's inefficient and that's broken. And so I think the way we approach this was, what if we could kind of invert that? What if we could bring payments upstream? Because we know the data's out there, 70% of consumers, their major decision point is centered around monthly loaner lease payment. What is my affordability? How can I purchase this vehicle and afford it? And that's a monthly payment. No one's paying cash. Very few are paying full sticker in the form of a check. And so how do we enable the dealership to quickly surface the features that are important to a consumer? I'm looking for an SUV with third row seats, lane keep assist and parking sensors. But ultimately, my budget is $500 to $525 a month.
但是，这个过程中会发生什么呢？看，这些数据是真实的，即使在今天，人们在经销商那里平均花费的时间仍然是五个小时。一旦我决定好我准备好去那里了，那就是低效和有问题的。所以我认为我们处理这个问题的方式是，如果我们能颠倒一下呢？如果我们能将付款前置呢？因为我们知道数据都在那儿，70%的消费者的主要决策点是围绕着每月的贷款或租赁付款。我的经济能力是多少？我怎么买得起这辆车呢？而且这是一个每月支付的额度。没有人用现金支付。很少有人用支票全额支付。那么我们如何使经销商能够快速展现对消费者重要的功能？我想要一辆带第三排座椅、车道保持辅助和停车传感器的SUV。但是最终，我的预算是每月500到525美元。
Now you've got places you can go to go through a payment calculator or estimator. There's digital retailing tools that force you to land on a particular vehicle only to them present you with a payment that doesn't translate to the show room, doesn't translate to the desk. And that in our opinion is a broken experience. You're saying, which I agree with both of these points, that the lack of payment transparency, you know, when someone just calls and speaks to the salesperson is a combination of technology, like a toolkit. And you know, with certain dealers, it's also a control thing.
现在你有可以通过支付计算器或估算器来确定的地方。有一些数字零售工具会强制你只能选择特定的车辆，然后呈现给你一种无法与展厅或办公桌上的支付方式相对应的付款方式。在我们看来，这就是一种糟糕的体验。你说得对，我也同意这两点，即缺乏支付透明度是技术和销售商控制的结合产物。
Because let's just be honest, right? We know that you have a customer that's captive in the dealership. There's just a higher close rate. That's a fact. Whether you like it or not, like, I know that you know that that is a fact.
因为让我们说实话，对不对？我们知道你们有一位被困在车厂的顾客。那里的成交率只是更高而已，这是事实。不管你是否喜欢，我知道你知道那是个事实。
I want to understand now what you're building, right? How is that supposed to, you know, improve this process? Yeah.
我现在想要明白你正在构建的东西，对吧？那样会如何改善这个流程呢？是的。
And so we look at the data that we've experienced coming from the marketplace side from from any lead gen platform. And you look at those leads that are sitting in this era. Of course, the data shows that you get someone in the door, whether it's an auto dealership or a retail store. Once you're in those doors, of course, you've got an audience that's, you've commanded that audience and and they're ready to buy. And they want to leave purchasing a product, whatever that product is.
因此，我们看一下我们从市场方面获得的数据，来自任何潜在客户生成平台。您看看那些处于这个时代的潜在客户。当然，数据显示，无论是汽车经销商还是零售店，只要有人进入门店，当然，您就拥有了一个观众，您已经吸引了他们并且他们准备好购买。他们想要购买任何产品。
If you look at a digital experience, they haven't yet gone to the physical bricks and mortar location. And so they haven't made the ultimate decision to purchase. The digital leads sitting in the CRM today are closing in single digit percentages. Why is that? They're unqualified. Typically, that lead has a piece of contact information, a vehicle of interest. And it's evolving. Maybe there's, you know, a trade estimate attached to it. Perhaps there's, you know, a prequel in terms of credit. But that's it.
如果你看看数字体验，它们还没有转到实体的实体店铺。因此他们还没有做出最终的购买决定。今天坐在CRM中的数字潜在客户只实现了几个百分点的转化率。为什么会这样呢？因为他们没有资质。通常，这些潜在客户只有一些联系信息和感兴趣的车辆。而且这些信息可能还在发展中。也许还有一个委托评估的附加信息，也可能有一个预先的信用评估。但只有这些而已。
And so when we look at all of those leads just sitting in the CRM, now you've got what we argue is the most important, one of the most important users at the dealership, the BDR rep or the sales rep. And we say that because that's the first touch point with a consumer. That's your one opportunity to convert that consumer into a paying customer. But before you even get to the transaction, it's getting them into the dealership.
因此，当我们看到所有那些似乎只是坐在客户关系管理系统中的潜在客户时，你现在拥有我们认为是最重要的、最重要的用户之一，就是BDR代表或销售代表。我们之所以这样说，是因为这是与消费者进行首次接触的时间点。这是将消费者转化为付费客户的机会。但是在你甚至还没有进行交易之前，就要让他们来到经销商那里。
We believe that this is an online to offline experience, a zombie champ. That's not going away anytime soon. So how do you qualify that lead better? Most important to a consumer is affordability today. I mean, that is going to continue into 2024. We can get into, you know, our opinion on where the economy is. But affordability is a central challenge to consumers when they're shopping for a vehicle. You've got to qualify that lead and you got to do it in the right way. You've got to arm anyone at the dealership with that technology to do that quickly and in real time. Otherwise, you'll lose.
我们相信这是一种线上到线下的体验，一种“僵尸冠军”。这种趋势将在不久的将来不会消失。那么如何更好地确定那些潜在客户呢？对于消费者来说，价格实惠是最重要的。我是说，这种趋势将持续到2024年。我们可以谈谈对经济形势的看法，但在消费者购车时，价格实惠是一个核心挑战。你必须合适地确定那些潜在客户，并采取正确的方式来做到这一点。你必须装备那些在销售店工作的人员使用技术来快速、实时地做到这一点。否则，你就会输掉竞争。
And so that's really what we're focused on with Carmatic is it's kind of like there's three pieces to our technology that allows for that. The first is really ingesting all of that data associated with the lead through Carmatic. The inbound lead information for that vehicle of interest, the payment information, the feature information, we can take all of that on packet and then quickly give that transparency to a BDR rep or a sales rep. So while they're on the phone with the consumer, while they're working that lead, while they're chatting with that consumer, they can surface all of those recommendations that have real-time monthly payments tied to them that have all the features that consumers are looking for, but then equally important line of sight and defroftability. I think that's a big disconnect here.
所以这就是Carmatic所关注的重点，它可以通过三个技术部分来实现。首先，我们可以通过Carmatic来获取与潜在客户相关的所有数据。这包括那辆感兴趣车辆的内部潜在客户信息、付款信息和功能信息。我们可以将这些信息集中在一起，迅速透明地提供给BDR代表或销售代表。因此，当他们与消费者通话、处理线索或与消费者交流时，他们可以提供所有含有实时月付款和消费者所寻求的功能的建议。但同样重要的是，他们可以提供有关可见性和可比较性的信息。我认为这是一个大的不协调之处。
Okay, but how are you doing this? Like give us, you know, under the hood. What's happening under the hood here? Yeah, under the hood, we're doing thousands of calculations on every vehicle in real time. So whether you're a single point store or a group, our technology is basically looking at that vehicle of interest, unpacking all of that build data. We're looking at what the consumer is looking for in terms of budget and affordability.
好的，但你是怎么做到这一点的？就是说，告诉我们，你是怎么做的。在这里发生了什么？是的，在这个过程中，我们实时对每辆车进行了成千上万次的计算。无论你是一个独立的零售商还是一个团体，我们的技术基本上是在查看那辆感兴趣的车辆，解析所有的构建数据。我们同时也会考虑消费者在预算和可负担性方面的需求。
And then the most important thing is think of it like this. We feel that a big miss on a lot of these payment pieces of technology that are out there today, whether it's a payment calculator or digital retailing product is they're not connected to the desk. What's the desk? Because not everyone here knows the definition of what that means.
然后最重要的事情是这样想。我们觉得当今存在的很多支付技术方面存在一个重大缺失，无论是支付计算器还是数字零售产品，它们都没有与桌子相连接。什么是桌子？因为并不是每个人都知道那是什么意思的定义。
So the desk in the dealership, you know, you've got your business development center that is tasked with working those leads. They want to get that lead to then come in and there's a hand up to the salesperson. The salesperson then is working with that consumer. Typically, they're walking a lot. They're finding out if that vehicle is available.
在经销商的办公桌上，你知道，有一个专门负责处理潜在客户的业务发展中心。他们希望把这些潜在客户转化为真正的客户，并将其引导到销售人员那里。销售人员会与这些消费者进行合作。通常情况下，他们会走很多路，了解车辆是否可用。
Once the consumer lands on a vehicle, they say, okay, I'm going to go over to the desk or the tower. And now we've got to find out if you can afford the vehicle. We're going to get you a monthly payment. Let's get you the real terms. Let's start submitting this to lenders and get you real numbers.
一旦消费者看中了一辆车，他们会说，“好的，我要去工作台或者办公室了。”现在我们要弄清楚你是否能负担得起这辆车。我们将为你计算月供，帮你得到真实的贷款条件。让我们开始向贷款人提交申请，为你获取真实的数字。
We'll get you the real numbers. We'll pull your credit. If you've got a trade, we've got to, do an appraisal on that trade. We've got to pick the right lender programs that will quote a payment based on your consumer profile. We've got to then calculate all the tax, tag, license data. We've got to put in all of our fees. Look, the dealers need to make money. There's markups involved. They're F&I products where they have margin.
我们会给你真实的数字。我们会查看你的信用记录。如果你有交易，我们需要对交易进行评估。我们需要选择合适的贷款方案，能够根据你的消费者资料给出还款额。然后，我们需要计算所有的税费、标签和许可证数据。我们还需要加上所有的费用。看吧，经销商需要赚钱。这其中涉及到加价。他们还有一些金融和保险产品，可以获得差价。
So all of this typically happens at what they call the sales desk. Today, that's in the showroom. And what we're saying is what if we can evolve that desk experience and move a lot of that online, move those payments. And the desk is really where the payment happens to get to that first pencil. They call it the first pencil of a payment. What if we could put a first or second pencil on every single car in real time digitally before the consumer comes into the show?
所以，所有这些通常是在他们称之为销售台的地方发生的。今天，那就在展厅里。我们想说的是，如果我们能改进这个台式体验并将其中大部分移至在线平台，移动那些支付方式。而销售台真正的作用是完成支付以获取最低交付定金。他们称之为首笔定金。如果我们能在消费者进入展厅之前，在每辆车上实时数字化地放置第一或第二笔定金会怎样呢？
And so the first one of the big ahas for us was there's a misconception that we're trying to come up with a payment without involving the dealer. And that's entirely not the case. In fact, we're starting with the desk. What we've said is we want to reimagine what the desk experience is. We're not taking an ounce of control away from the dealer. When we set up a dealer for the first time, they're inputting all of their own configurations the way they typically do that desk experience in the showroom. We're just moving it upstream and doing it in additional format.
因此，我们的第一个重大发现是存在着一个误解，即我们试图在不牵涉经销商的情况下提供一种付款方式。事实上，我们是从工作台开始的。我们想重新构想工作台体验是什么样子。我们并没有剥夺经销商的任何控制权。当我们第一次为经销商设置时，他们会输入他们自己的配置，就像他们通常在展厅里那样进行工作台体验。我们只是将其上游移动，并以其他方式进行。
So explain that very simply. If I want to make $2,000 on these, these, you know, sub-sector cars or whatever, you're inputting that. And again, that's very basic, you know, that's a very basic example. But you're basically taking that, you're putting it into your system. And then your system's able to spit out the proper payments for the customer in the car based on my requirements. Is that basically how it works? Yeah, for the most part, again, we're inputting their preferred lenders. So dealers have lenders that they prefer to work with. We've got logic that banks in their markups. So dealers typically, when we're marking up, you know, at least rate the money factor or an interest rate. Yeah. And when you say markup, you're saying something distinct from what people associate with, like, you know, price markup, you're saying a markup on an interest rate and stuff like that. Correct.
所以，简单地解释一下。如果我想在这些子行业汽车上赚2000美元，你就会输入这个数据。当然，这只是一个非常基本的例子。但基本上，你把这个数据输入到你的系统中。然后根据我的要求，你的系统就能够提供给客户和汽车的适当付款方式。基本上就是这样工作的吗？是的，大部分是这样的，我们输入他们首选的贷款人的信息。汽车经销商有他们更愿意合作的贷款人。我们有逻辑来对银行的加价进行处理。通常汽车经销商在进行加价时，会涉及金额因素或利率。是的。你所说的加价，是指与人们通常认为的价格加价不同的东西，而是指利率上的加价等等。没错。
Some dealers will be marking up the interest rate. Of course, the price is critical. So there is margin built into the invoice price, which is what the dealer pays and the selling price, which is what they sell to the consumer for. So we have all of that logic baked in their finance and insurance products. That's also a profit center for the dealership. So, you know, aftermarket warranties, protection coverage, things like that. All of that is ingested.
一些经销商会提高利率。当然，价格是关键。因此，发票价格中有一定的利润空间，这是经销商支付的价格，销售价格则是他们向消费者出售的价格。所以我们将所有这些逻辑都融入他们的金融和保险产品中。这也是经销商的利润中心。所以，你知道的，售后保修、保护性覆盖范围等等，所有这些都被纳入其中。
Typically, this is all done at the desk while the consumer is in the showroom waiting for that first monthly payment estimate. We're doing that. We're preloading all of that, all of those inputs when we first set up a dealership. And so now when the dealer is using karmatic and they're speaking to a consumer, trying to get to that monthly payment, we've got all of that logic already baked in. And now we've moved it upstream whereby traditionally, a business development rep or salesperson doesn't have any access to that. They have to wait until the consumers in the showroom. And then what they do is they go over to the desk and on a busy Saturday, there's a line at the desk salespeople. There's a, you know, line of salespeople at the desk waiting for that first pencil, that first monthly payment estimate.
通常情况下，这一切都是在消费者在展厅等待第一次月付款估算时在办公桌上完成的。我们正在这样做。当我们初次设立一家经销商时，我们会预装所有这些信息和数据。因此，现在当经销商使用考马蒂克与消费者交谈，试图得到每月付款时，我们已经将所有逻辑都预先设定好了。现在我们已经将它提前至上游了，以往传统上，业务发展代表或销售人员无法获得任何这方面的信息。他们必须等到消费者在展厅时才能了解情况。然后他们会去办公桌前，在一个繁忙的周六，销售人员排着队等待第一次估算、第一次月付款估算。
And that's part of the frustration with consumers is one, the wait time. Two, I think a big one is a consumer gets really excited about a vehicle of interest, right? And they might see it on one of the marketplaces. You know, they submit that lead, they get to the dealership only to find that they can't afford that car. You know, that payment comes back and they're $200 off of what they thought they could afford. And so what if we could, what if we could create that transparency, bring that upstream, before the consumer comes in, they've got five vehicles of interest, and they have a sense of what that monthly payment's going to be. By the time they get to the dealership, there's no disappointment.
这也是消费者的一部分挫折：一是等待时间长。二，我认为一个很大的问题是，消费者对感兴趣的车辆非常兴奋，对吧？他们可能在市场上看到了它。你知道，他们提交了消息，然后去车店，结果发现自己买不起那辆车。还有，贷款额度出来后，跟他们预期的相差200美元。那么，如果我们可以在消费者到店之前提前透明化这一切，让他们有五辆感兴趣的车辆，并且知道每月付款会是多少，那该有多好。当他们到达车店时，就不会有失望了
And I think that's what we're seeing in real time is, you know, less frustration, especially as we go into 24, again, in this high rate environment, consumers don't know what they can and can't afford. And dealers don't have the toolkit to answer those questions. They just don't have.
我认为我们正在实时观察到的情况就是，你知道的，尤其是在我们进入24号这样高利率环境下，消费者对于自己能否负担得起某些东西感到越来越沮丧。而经销商没有工具来回答这些问题，他们就是没有。
So we're improving that customer satisfaction for the dealership because we're kind of solving for that upstream online, all in a digital way. Does this risk anyone's job at the traditional dealership? I don't think it risks anyone's job at all. I think it makes them a heck of a lot more efficient. On a busy Saturday, now I can, as a desking manager, I can desk a heck of a lot more deals. As a salesperson or a DDR rep, I can handle a lot more customers than I'm typically used to handling. So think about, again, going back to that busy Saturday, as a salesperson, it's one-on-one, it takes me so much time, not only to find that the vehicle is available, to find the right features, et cetera. We've already surfaced that. Now I can handle five customers at once because we've done all that. It's definitely a huge bottleneck. On desking as much as we could because it's the bottleneck when it's busy, that is your bottleneck. Absolutely. Yeah, and I think it's a huge bottleneck.
所以我们正在通过数字化的方式，解决线上的问题，从而提高经销商的客户满意度。这会危及传统经销商的工作吗？我认为不会危及任何人的工作，反而会使他们更高效。在繁忙的星期六，作为一个销售经理，现在我可以处理更多的交易。作为销售员或DDR代表，我可以处理比以往更多的顾客。所以，想想在繁忙的星期六，作为销售员，我以前需要花费很多时间才能找到可用的车辆，找到合适的功能等等。现在我们已经解决了这些问题。现在我可以同时处理五个顾客，因为我们已经完成了一切。这绝对是一个巨大的瓶颈。在繁忙时期，我们尽可能解决掉这个瓶颈，因为这是你的瓶颈。没错，我认为这是一个巨大的瓶颈。
And as I mentioned, I'm a huge car enthusiast and my wife actually, she loves changing out her truck every few years. So we lease her vehicle. Even knowing what I know and being part of the industry, it's so frustrating to get that monthly loan release payment, in our case, the lease payment. I think part of that is this unwillingness on the part of the dealer to want to present that payment online before I come into the showroom. But I don't think anyone's approached it the way we have with Carmada. Again, we're not changing the way they desk deals. We're not changing the way they get to that first, second, third, final pencil of a payment. All we're doing is automating that. All of those processes and doing it real time and bringing it online. And I think that's a big disconnect with just transparency and general. You got this online to offline experience that's so broken because that initial payment, so those that are doing it online and offering some kind of monthly payment estimate online, it doesn't translate to the show. And it's broken. I don't think anyone's really started with the desk and then built an experience around that affordability and transparency. And that's what we've done. We started from day one.
正如我之前提到的那样，我是一个非常热衷于汽车的爱好者，而实际上，我的妻子她喜欢每隔几年更换一辆卡车。所以我们会租赁她的车辆。即使我了解情况并且是这个行业的一部分，每个月还款的压力实在让人沮丧，在我们的情况下，就是租赁的每月付款。我认为其中一部分原因是经销商不愿意在我去展厅之前在线上提供付款信息。但我认为没有人像我们的Carmada一样来解决这个问题。再说一次，我们并不打算改变他们的交易方式。我们并不打算改变他们得出第一、第二、第三或最终付款计划的方式。我们所做的只是将其自动化。所有这些流程都是实时的，并且在线上进行。我认为这是透明度的一种巨大脱节。你有这种在线上到线下的体验，因为那笔最初的付款，那些在网上进行付款估算并给出一些月费预估的人，这种体验在实体店中是行不通的。这是问题所在。我认为没有人真正从桌面开始，然后建立起一个围绕可负担性和透明度的体验。这就是我们所做的事情。我们从一开始就做到了这一点。
All right, so very integrated question. You are not the bank. The dealer here is not the bank. You are working with banks or with the dealer's banks to get their info. But how are you able to provide that correct payment for a customer if you are not actually the lender and it's not actually this customer is not actually being sent to the bank? How are you doing this? Great question. So we're, we've built a lot of back end partnerships with data providers. I've looked into some of these things. Let me tell you, I've looked into some of these things. And so I quickly discovered that capital one does not put out rate sheets. How the hell do you know what they're going to act and what they're going to do when they don't put out this data? But anyways, so go ahead. So yeah, so we've built a lot of partnerships with all the data providers that ultimately arrived at that monthly payment.
好的，这个问题非常复杂。你不是银行，这里的经销商也不是银行。你与银行或经销商的银行合作获取他们的信息。但如果你不是实际的借款人，并且这个客户实际上并没有被发送到银行，那么你如何能够为客户提供正确的付款方式？你是怎么做到的？好问题。我们与数据提供商建立了许多后端合作伙伴关系。我已经调查过其中的一些情况。让我告诉你，我已经调查过其中的一些情况。所以我很快发现Capital One不公布利率表。当他们不公布这些数据时，你怎么知道他们会采取什么行动？但无论如何，继续吧。所以是的，我们与所有的数据提供商建立了很多合作伙伴关系，最终得出了那个月付款金额。
The lenders are a big piece of that. So we are pulling in real time programs. We have over 200 lenders on our platform. We've got the captains, third parties. And what's interesting is that long tail of credit unions. I don't think a lot of people realize that a lot of dealers are really leveraging credit unions, especially now, especially now as they offer a lot of them offer better terms. They can get a customer in at a lower monthly payment. And the dealers that can actually make more gross because of those terms.
放贷方在其中起着重要的作用。所以我们正在引入实时方案。我们的平台上有200多位放贷方。我们有船长、第三方，还有有趣的是那些信用合作社。我认为很多人都没有意识到很多经销商现在真的在充分利用信用合作社，尤其是现在，因为很多信用合作社提供更好的条件。他们可以让顾客以较低的月供购车。而那些能够因为这些条件而获得更高毛利的经销商。
So we're ingesting all of that data on the OEM side. We're ingesting all the real-time rebates incentives, etc. So you do new and used, you do new and used, right? New and used, of course, CPO in transit, all of that. But at the end of the day, to get to that monthly payment accuracy, of course, we've got to have the right programs. And so our system is doing that automatically for the dealership.
所以我们正在从原始设备制造商方面摄取所有的数据。我们正在摄取所有实时的折扣，激励等信息。所以你们做新车和二手车，对吧？当然，我们要处理新车和二手车，还有在运输中的认证二手车，所有的都要涉及。但是最终，为了确保月度付款的准确性，当然我们必须有适当的计划。因此我们的系统会自动地为经销商处理这些。
If we've got dealers that only want to use the captive lender, fantastic. When we onboard every dealer, we work with their preferred lenders. But then we're also offering access to our entire lender network. And we think we've got one of the most robust lender networks in terms of coverage in the space. And I think that's really important offering that objectivity and that range of choice for dealers. We've actually heard from dealers that by leveraging karmatic, we've uncovered lender programs that they didn't know exist. Yeah, because you because you know of it through your data, and maybe the desk manager just happens to not know about it. That makes sense.
如果我们只有一些只想使用我们自己贷款机构的经销商，那太好了。当我们与每个经销商合作时，我们会与他们优先选择的贷款机构合作。但同时，我们也提供整个贷款网络的访问权限。我们认为我们在这个领域拥有一个最全面覆盖面的贷款机构网络。我认为这是非常重要的，因为我们能够提供客观性和选择范围给经销商。实际上，我们从经销商那里听说，通过利用卡马蒂克，我们发现了他们根本不知道存在的贷款计划。是的，因为我们通过数据知道，而也许桌面经理不知道。这很有道理。
And that dovetails into kind of the second piece, which we haven't touched on, which is profitability. So in addition to putting up a monthly payment instantly on every vehicle in real time across the entire lot, or if you're a group across the campus, we're also putting a gross profit on every vehicle. And so now we've got line of sight for the dealership on profitability. Today, the dealer has to land on a car, pick the right program, do all of that kind of heavy lifting to arrive at the profit. We put a profit on every vehicle.
这与我们还没有涉及的第二个方面息息相关，那就是盈利能力。除了在整个车场或者如果你是一个集团，在整个园区实时地逐辆车交付月度付款，我们还为每辆车提供了总利润。所以现在，我们为经销商提供了盈利的可见性。如今，经销商必须为每辆车选择正确的计划，并做出所有艰巨的工作才能达到盈利。而我们为每辆车确定了利润。
And the next question is going to be, well, now you're taking profit away from me. You're taking control away from that. And that's absolutely not the case. In fact, what we're doing is we're balancing the most profitable vehicle with the lowest monthly payment for the consumer. If I've got a consumer that comes in and says, my budget is $500 to $525 a month. Here are the features I want. Here's the kind of vehicle I want. Our system looks instantly across the entire set of inventory, finds the vehicles that meet those kind of affordability needs of the consumer, but then starts with the highest profit. And so if you're able to get a consumer into a vehicle within that profit, within that monthly payment range, we're going to balance that with the highest profit for the dealership.
下一个问题是，你是在从我这里赚取利润，你在剥夺我的控制权。但实际上，情况并非如此。事实上，我们正在权衡消费者最有利可图的车辆与最低月供。如果一个消费者告诉我，他的预算是每月500到525美元，他希望有哪些功能，他想要什么类型的车辆，我们的系统会立即扫描整个库存，找到符合消费者实际负担能力的车辆，但会优先考虑利润最高的车辆。因此，如果我们能够将消费者置于该利润范围内、符合月供要求的车辆中，我们会将之平衡利益最大化地为车行。
And you're not consumer facing, right? Like you said, you're a sales enablement tool. You are completely on the back end. Correct.
你不是面向消费者的，对吗？就像你说的，你是一个销售增效工具。你完全在后台操作。是的。
Okay, so, so what can be through this, right? Any consumer listening to this knows that you can go on a dealership's website right now and get that crazy monthly payment range, which is incorrect. Unless they have some great software, in which case, it may be better. But needless to say, we all know the ones that are incorrect. Every dealer listening to this is probably thinking, Oh, well, I work with some digital retailing tool. That enables my customer to get some monthly payment, which is also probably incorrect. Maybe it is correct if they're working with another great partner. And there are some great partners in the industry.
好的，那么，那么通过这个可以得到什么，对吧？任何听到这个的消费者都知道，你现在可以去经销商的网站上得到那个疯狂的每月付款范围，但是这是错误的。除非他们有一些很好的软件，那样的话，可能会更好。但无需多说，我们都知道那些是错误的。每个听到这个的经销商可能都在想，哦，那么，我使用了一些数字零售工具。这可以让我的客户得到一些每月付款，但这也很可能是错误的。如果他们与另一个很好的合作伙伴合作，那么可能是正确的。在行业中有一些很好的合作伙伴。
I want to understand now, if you are successful, meaning if every dealership today had adopted karmatic, your product, would you make the digital retailing tool obsolete? And the reason I say that is because if most digital retailing tools are not providing accurate monthly payments, and again, there's exceptions, I'm a huge fan of auto five, for example, there are part of the podcast. And I've really believed in a product for many, many years, because they build a phenomenal product that integrates with other lenders. But the point I'm trying to make here is if you're successful, right, what is that? How does that impact the whole digital retail world or better yet? How does that impact the front end consumer experience before they even get to submitting that lead? Because now is it will there be a disconnect? That's what I'm trying to understand.
我现在想要明白的是，如果你们的产品karmatic能够在每个经销商处都普及开来，你们会让数字零售工具变得过时吗？我这么说的原因是，如果大多数数字零售工具不能提供准确的每月付款金额，当然也有例外，比如我非常喜欢Auto Five，他们是这个播客的一部分。多年来，我一直非常相信他们的产品，因为他们制作了一个与其他贷款机构整合的出色产品。但我想要表达的是，如果你们成功了，那会产生什么影响呢？它将如何影响整个数字零售世界，或者更准确地说，它将如何影响消费者在提交询价之前的前端体验？因为现在，会不会有一种脱节？这就是我想要了解的。
I think when you look at some of the digital retailing tools out there, they're really not being used by the dealership as a transactional tool. And more big fans of auto five as well. I think if you look at some of the other players, they're really being treated as a lead gen. And the reason being is there is that disconnect because they're not truly connected to the desk, meaning the digital retailing tools will call and payment estimators. It's a super lead. It's a lead. And we hear that time and again from all ahead. And again, I don't want to paint a broad brush because it's with very few exceptions. There's companies that have built the intellectual property like autofy and some others where they actually have integrations with lenders. But otherwise, there's many that are just super leads. Correct.
我认为当你看一些数字零售工具时，你会发现它们并没有被汽车经销商作为交易工具来使用。而且也有更多的汽车五粉丝。我觉得如果你看其他一些竞争对手，你会发现他们真的被视为潜在客户生成工具。原因在于，这种断层是因为它们与公司的联系不紧密，这意味着数字零售工具不能实现具体的拨打电话和付款估算。它只是一个超级潜在客户。我们一直都听到这样的说法。当然，我不想一概而论，只是少数例外。有一些公司已经构建了像autofy和其他一些公司一样的知识产权，他们实际上已经与借款人进行了整合。但是除此之外，还有许多其他只是超级潜在客户。正确。
And if you look at those super lead gen providers, because one, they don't have the depth of coverage of the lenders and the lender platforms, they're really not connected to the desk in the sense that that payment is unwound. The desk is not leveraging the lead in the same way that let's say a salesperson or BDR. So I'm on the dealer website and let's say I've got a digital retailing tool on that website. It's still a monthly payment estimate. Unless again, I'm direct to lender and I've got that direct connection with the lender. Great. Now I've got, let's say making it up, I've got a partnership with Capital One. We're going direct with Capital One or Westlake. Fantastic. But what about all those other deals where the dealership is working with other lenders, the credit unions, some other third parties. Let's say I've got a consumer that is basically, look, I'm a chasing customer. I want to work with Chase. What happens then?
如果你看一下那些超级潜在客户生成提供商，首先，他们没有像借款人和借款平台那样的广泛涵盖，他们与交易所没有真正的联系，因为交易并未解除。交易所并没有像销售人员或业务开拓代表那样利用这些潜在客户。所以我在经销商网站上，假设我的网站上有一个数字零售工具。这仍然是一个每月付款的估计。除非再次与借款人直接联系，建立起直接联系。太好了。现在我有了，比方说，我与Capital One建立了合作伙伴关系。我们直接与Capital One或Westlake联系。太棒了。但是那些经销商与其他借款人合作的其他交易呢，比如信用合作社和其他第三方呢。假设我有一个消费者基本上是这样说的，我是一个追求Chase信贷的顾客。那么会发生什么呢？
So I think what happens when the customer gets into the dealership and they get put to the desk, the desk is essentially unwinding that deal and redesking it out based on how they want to conduct business. And I think that's the big disconnect. So it's extremely frustrating for consumers when they get a monthly payment estimate on the dealer's website or they're on a marketplace site and they get to the dealership and they're working with a different lender and that payment is wildly off.
所以我认为顾客进入经销商时，被引导到办公桌前，办公桌实际上是在根据他们想要进行的业务方式，对交易进行重新安排和调整。我认为这就是一个巨大的脱节所在。所以当消费者在经销商的网站上得到每月付款估算或者在一个市场网站上得到预估后，他们来到经销商后与不同的贷款人打交道，但实际付款金额完全不同，这对他们来说是非常令人沮丧的。
So I think as we evolve karmatic, we are actually in the middle of testing a consumer facing piece of function out. Shop-by payment at the group site level. Okay. Now things are getting wild over here. We're getting wild. And look, putting my founder hat back on, making those things we've been in the past, we want to get that B2B sales enablement piece right first. We don't want to get distracted with that. Yeah, that's the goods. That's the meat and potatoes, as I like to say. Yeah. And we get really excited because no one's focused on arming that first touchpoint at the dealership, the BDR, the BDC rep and the sales rep with a toolkit for them to do their job better. It's baffling to me. Today, the BDR rep has the CRM and they're working with the dealer website, which is the same experience that the consumer sees. And so, how are you able to be a better advocate for your consumer shop or when you're using the same toolkit that the consumer already has access to?
所以我认为，当我们发展karmatic时，实际上我们正在测试一个面向消费者的功能。在集团网站级别上进行按店付款。好的。现在事情变得疯狂起来。我们变得疯狂了。而且，戴上我的创始人的帽子，我们要做过去的那些东西，我们想先把B2B销售推动部分搞对。我们不想分心。是的，那才是关键。就像我喜欢说的那样，那是重要的事情。是的。我们非常兴奋，因为没有人专注于为经销商的第一个接触点（BDR、BDC代表和销售代表）提供更好工具的装备。对我来说，这令人困惑。今天，BDR代表使用的是CRM系统，并且与经销商网站一起工作，而这与消费者看到的是相同的体验。那么，在使用与消费者已经可以访问的相同工具包时，你如何能成为消费者购物的更好倡导者呢？
So we've said, what if we could build a product that is really focused on those and use cases? The BDC, the salesperson, of course, we have asking managers and folks at the desk using our product as a desking tool. But we're really kind of reimagining desking, we're evolving, desking. And believe me, I see, I totally get it. It clicked for me, I think like 20 minutes ago when I was like, aha, I get exactly the bottleneck that you're solving because I've experienced this firsthand and it's painful.
那么我们说过，如果我们能够构建一个真正专注于这些使用案例的产品会怎么样呢？这个BDC（商业发展中心），销售人员，当然，我们也有经理和使用我们产品作为桌子工具的人来使用。但我们真的在重新设想桌子的概念，我们正在演化，改进桌子的功能。相信我，我明白了，我完全理解了。大约20分钟前，我有一个灵光乍现的时刻，我完全理解了你们要解决的瓶颈问题，因为我亲身经历过这种痛苦的情况。
Getting back to your point on longer term, as we evolve, karmatic and we become embedded in the workflow, that's another big learning for me personally was moving, coming from the digital side of the business, the marketplace side of the business and really focus more on pure sass, you really have to embed yourself in the workflow and make yourself sticky. You can't change behavior, you have to augment their existing processes. But if you do that right, now you really open up a lot of opportunity to then expand that functionality.
回到你刚才提到的长远计划，随着我们的发展，命运和我们与工作流程的结合，对我来说另一个重要的学习就是从数字业务和市场业务角度出发，真正专注于纯SaaS业务。你必须将自己深深融入工作流程中，并让自己变得重要。你不能改变他们的行为，而是必须增强他们现有的工作流程。但如果你能做到这一点，现在你就真正打开了很多扩展功能的机会。
And so we're anchored on improving that desking experience, evolving the desking experience to make it a lot more accessible. Once you do that and you build trust around payment accuracy and payment integrity, now you can start looking at how do we surface this in front of consumers in a much more effective way.
因此，我们着重改善工作体验，致力于让工作变得更加便捷。一旦你实现了这一点，并且在付款准确性和完整性方面建立了信任，那么你就可以开始考虑如何以更有效的方式向消费者展示这一点。
Today, consumers can't go into karmatic.com and start searching for vehicles. That's on purpose. Yeah, and it's smart because you're just not competing with the flood of kind of front and tools, right? You're a bit lower funnel, just much less competition, arguably more sophistication potentially and having to, like you said, augment internal dealership processes, but also a lot less competition today and clearly a lot of inefficiency. A lot less competition, a lot of inefficiency.
消费者今天不可能进入karmatic.com并开始搜索车辆。这是有意为之的。是的，这是明智的，因为你不再需要与大量的前端工具竞争，对吧？你处在下游环节，竞争相对较少，可以更有可能有更高的复杂性，需要像你所说的增强内部经销商流程，但今天的竞争相对较少，显然存在许多低效率。竞争少，效率低。
But it's interesting you mentioned that. We really have a chance to talk about our enterprise solutions. So we're starting to see a lot of inbound interest for access to our payment engine by an ABS because of our, one, because we started with the desk, two, because our whole ethos is that payment that a consumer sees on a consumer facing site does not translate to what I end up going home with at the dealership. So we're starting to look with partners who see valuable integrations that enable their solutions with a best in class payment technology. So, you know, and one that's tied to the showroom. And that's, for me, that's what gets me out of that. That's what gets me out of that. That's what gets me so excited is the consistency, that link from online to offline when it comes to that monthly payment. So you're going to start to see climatic in multiple places. That will be our foray as well into kind of getting in front of consumers is working with. So you're going to be powering other systems and platforms you're saying. Correct.
但是你提到的是有趣的。我们真的有机会谈论我们的企业解决方案。因此，由于我们从办公桌开始，以及我们的整个基本理念是消费者在消费者面向的网站上看到的付款方式与我在经销商那里得到的付款方式是不同的，所以我们开始看到很多ABS对我们的付款引擎感兴趣的入站请求。因此，我们开始寻找那些看到有价值的集成并能够使用最佳付款技术的合作伙伴。所以，你知道的，对我来说，让我感到兴奋的是一致性，从在线支付到离线支付的链接。所以你将开始在多个地方看到这种氛围。这也是我们与消费者接触的方式，与他们合作。所以你是说你将为其他系统和平台提供动力？是的，正确。
And that's not to say, again, I get asked this question a lot from from the VCs as well, which is given you guys where you guys come from, where's the marketplace? You know, where's the climatic.com, you know, stand-alone experience. And again, going back to what I said earlier, we're laser focused on being the building the foundation right now. Absolutely. If you build a strong foundation, yeah, you can, yeah, you can then, you know, leverage that foundation and that in many different ways. I totally get it. Absolutely.
这并不意味着我被问了这个问题很多次，包括来自风险投资家的问询。他们会问，鉴于你们来自何方，市场在哪里？你懂的，类似climatic.com的独立体验在哪里？再次强调，我们现在专注于构建基础。完全没错。如果你建立了一个稳固的基础，你可以在很多不同的方面发挥作用。我完全明白。
I know you have an affiliation with Island Auto Group. Can you just tell us a bit about the results, like early results of climatic? I mean, you're live, you're launched, right? You're signing up dealers. Just give us some early results. Tell us what it's been like, real operations.
我知道您与Island Auto Group有关联。您能告诉我们一些关于climatic早期结果的细节吗？我的意思是，您已经上线，开始运营了，对吧？您现在正在与经销商进行签约业务。请告诉我们一些早期结果。告诉我们真实运营的情况。
Yeah, one thing to call out with Island Auto Group is they've been a phenomenal partner to us. I kind of approach building any company with a lens and a focus on customer development, which is really getting out of the office before you write your first line of code and really listening to your users. For us, our users are our dealers and more importantly, it's the folks in the dealership that are using your product every day. Island has been instrumental in working with us. We work with, you know, 13 of their stores on a daily basis. We're getting real time feedback from BDR reps, sales reps, GSMs, GMs, the ownership. Island had the initial vision for what climatic would become and they've been instrumental in getting us where we are today.
是的，在岛屿汽车集团方面需要指出的一点是，他们一直是我们的出色合作伙伴。我在建立任何公司时都会注重客户开发，并始终关注用户需求，也就是在编写第一行代码之前走出办公室，真正倾听用户的声音。对我们来说，我们的用户就是我们的经销商，更重要的是，他们是每天使用我们产品的经销商员工。岛屿汽车集团对我们的工作起到了关键作用。我们每天与他们的13家门店合作。我们从BDR代表、销售代表、GSM、GM和所有者那里得到了实时反馈。岛屿汽车集团最初对Climatic的愿景起到了决定性的作用，并且一直在帮助我们取得今天的成就。
When you look at Island, when you look at a lot of our large dealer group customers, again, we work with dealer groups. We work with single point stores. We're seeing a lot of great early feedback, green shoots, if you will. We're seeing much higher appointment set rates for those that use climatic. Those set rates are turning into higher show rates. Those show rates are closing at much higher conversion rates. Because we're surfacing all of this transparency upstream, we're providing that transparent to consumers, ultimately enabling the dealer to be a lot more efficient.
当你看到岛屿时，当你看到我们许多大型经销商集团的客户时，我们再次与经销商集团合作。我们与单点店合作。我们看到了许多积极的初步反馈，就像新芽一样。对于那些使用气候控制的人，我们看到更高的预约设置率。这些设置率转化为更高的到场率。这些到场率以更高的转化率关闭。因为我们提供了所有这些透明度上游，我们向消费者提供了这种透明度，最终使经销商更加高效。
We're seeing, especially from folks at Island, they've actually ripped out their entire desk and product and are using climatic as the sole desk and product. We've got other dealer groups that are started out as using this at the upper funnel with BDC and sales folks. And now they're realizing that, why am I paying for a desk and product when climatic already does that for us?
我们看到，尤其是来自Island的人们，他们实际上撤掉了他们整个的桌子和产品，现在只使用climatic作为他们的桌子和产品。我们还有其他经销商集团，最初只是在上游漏斗中使用这种方式，包括BDC（商业发展中心）和销售人员。现在他们意识到，为什么还要为桌子和产品付费，而climatic已经为我们提供了这些功能呢？
One thing to call out, we're not going to market as a desk and product. Yes, of course, we're a desking platform, but we're so much more. We started with desking as the foundation, as the anchor, but from there, we built best-in-class inventory search. We built a phenomenal recommendation engine that anchors on monthly payment accuracy, and we built marketing automation on top of that. So, again, anchoring on payment transparency, but then the applications that you can build on top of that is really the next generation for what we're going to take.
有一件事需要注意，我们不会将自己定位为一个桌子和产品。当然，我们是一个办公桌平台，但我们远不止于此。我们从办公桌作为基础开始，建立了一流的库存搜索功能。我们还建立了一个基于月付准确度的绝佳推荐引擎，并在此基础上构建了营销自动化。因此，我们以付款透明度为支点，但你可以在此基础上构建的应用实际上是我们即将迈进的下一代。
I love it. David, super interesting. When climatic gets the proper adoption or gets mass adoption in the industry, what is that end result? Give us just a snapshot of how has Carbine changed for the consumer and the dealer?
我喜欢这个。大卫，非常有趣。当气候技术在行业中得到适当应用或大规模应用时，会有什么结果呢？简单说说，气候技术如何改变消费者和经销商的现状？
I think it boils down to affordability, transparency, and efficiency. So, as we evolve, Carmatic, we become part of the workflow at the dealership. In doing so, we're really making them a heck of a lot more efficient. We're generating much higher profitability for the dealers, one, because time-saving and full automation, two, because we're surfacing profit in real time, and they're able to have line of sight into the most profitable vehicle transactions that still balance the needs of their consumer shoppers. And three, ultimately, this transparency piece.
我认为，它归结为可负担性、透明度和效率。因此，随着我们发展，卡玛谛克成为了经销商工作流程的一部分。通过这样做，我们真正地使他们变得更加高效。我们为经销商带来了更高的利润，首先是因为节省时间和完全自动化，其次是因为我们实时显示利润，他们能够看到最有利可图的交易车辆，同时仍平衡满足消费者购物需求。最后，这就是透明度的重要性。
As we evolve and grow and scale Carmatic, now as a consumer, I'm going to have full confidence and trust that the dealership I'm working with is going to meet my payment needs. And at the same time, I'm also going to have a much higher, a much higher, a better experience working with that dealership. We want to build trust. We want to be the ultimate advocate for our dealer partners to build trust with their consumers.
随着Carmatic的进步、发展和规模扩大，作为一个消费者，我对与我合作的经销商满怀信心和信任，相信他们将满足我的付款需求。同时，我也将在与这家经销商合作时获得更高、更好的体验。我们希望建立信任。我们希望成为经销商合作伙伴与消费者建立信任的最佳代言人。
As we continue growing and evolving the Carmatic platform, the ultimate vision here at the end of the day is I will have complete trust and confidence that the payment I see online is the payment I'm going to get at the showroom when I go close out the deal and drive home with that new car.
在我们不断增长和演化卡玛蒂克平台的过程中，最终的愿景是，无论我在网上看到的付款是什么，当我去展厅完成交易并驾驶新车回家时，我都能完全信任并有信心会得到相同的付款。
Amazing work, David. Are you going to be at NADA? I assume you're going to be there. Have some representation?
太棒了，大卫！你会去NADA吗？我猜你会在那里吧。有什么代表作品吗？
Absolutely. Yeah. We're looking forward to meeting with a handful of folks. If anyone's interested, please reach out. You can reach me at DavidCarmatic.com. And any dealers out there that would like to learn more about our technology, you can book a demo pretty quickly and easily at Carmatic.com. And we'll also put the link in the show notes below.
当然。是的。我们期待与一些人见面。如果有人感兴趣，请联系我。你可以通过DavidCarmatic.com联系我。对于那些想了解我们的技术的经销商，你可以很快、很容易地预约演示，详情请访问Carmatic.com。我们还会在下方的节目说明中放置链接。
So if anyone wants to visit Carmatic.com, learn more. They can just click the link in the show notes below and they can see it right there.
所以，如果有人想要访问Carmatic.com并了解更多信息，他们只需点击下方节目说明中的链接，就可以立即看到它。
David Dom, thanks for coming on CDD podcast. So super fun. 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.
大卫·多姆，感谢你参加CDD播客节目。太有趣了，很高兴能在这里。好了，希望你喜欢那一集。请给这个播客节目评个分。考虑订阅节目，并检查节目备注中我们谈论的链接。感谢你的收听。下次见！