The Truth About Vendor Fatigue: Why They Won't Leave You Alone

Fighting off vendors at month-end 0:00

Steve Shaw: Welcome, Dave Rogers. We are back here again. What's happening in your world?

Dave Rogers: Just doing the grind, like everybody else, trying to finish the month out. I feel like an old paladin from the days of knights, trying to fight off all the vendors coming in with my sword. It's amazing how many people want your attention the last week of the month trying to sell you something because they have a quota.

Steve Shaw: Vendors.

Dave Rogers: We've talked about this before. I wish my people were as aggressive as they are, because, man, they are out there. It's crazy. I'm going to call my HR department and see if there's a workers' comp claim I can file for vendor fatigue. Maybe I can get a lawyer to take my case up. And I really do like a lot of the guys and gals who are knocking on the door all the time. They're really good people. But, man, they are ruthless. It really is getting to be a lot, the amount of people beating on the door.

Steve Shaw: Well, I never really thought about it until you just said it. With all of these companies getting bought out, a lot of people are now with, what do you want to call it, a capital investment group or something like that, and the quotas just became real. If you were with a company before, and your company was growing, or you're the founder like me, I don't have quotas. I have to make a living for myself, and I keep my guys busy, but I don't have a quota where somebody's beating down on me. I can only imagine if you have an investment group looking for quotas.

It's funny, even thinking about it now. I've had some offers in the past from people saying they're interested. I have a pretty big reach. If people really realized the number of dealers in my network, it's pretty big. My network is pretty large. But if I were to sell, all of a sudden I'd have to go to work for a living. I have almost zero turnover, almost zero attrition. But I can imagine what the pressure would be on Steve to work if there was an investment group behind me. So I can only imagine the quotas or the pressure to add sales. And, fuck, Dave, you've got forty stores or close enough to it. You'd just make their year.

Dave Rogers: Yeah, and I get it. I've tried to explain it before: we don't work that way. We're not that fast. I have three different owners, and the business is segregated among those three owners. One size does not fit all with our group. I know we look like a great account to land, but I like to do small pilots. I like to test it out with people. And I think that's the hardest part for most of these vendors to understand. They drank the Kool-Aid with their product, and I give them a lot of credit. They really believe in what they're trying to show me. I know they all have a quota and some kind of incentive. I guess they get themselves all worked up sometimes, and I actually feel a little bad.

The right seat and the right store for a pilot 3:30

Dave Rogers: I want to look at it, but I always say I have to find the right seat and the right ass. You don't want me taking your AI training program or your AI voice tool, or AI emails, or AI outbound, whatever the case may be, and putting it in the wrong store where they're not going to really pilot it and test it. You really have to run it through the wringer to make sure it works for us, it works for them, and it works for the customer, obviously. It's not just signing up for another $1,500 product you're going to forget about, because that is the fear. We sign up for something we don't use.

I found out today, while I was texting back and forth with one of my vendors, that it looks like we're getting double billed: once from her company and once from the DMS, because the product overlaps. That's the fear. You have these bills coming through every month, and you're just paying them and don't even realize it. It's a vendor we currently use, so it's not that we don't use it, but the DMS is billing us and so is the vendor.

The way it works now, like you said, venture capitalists and private equity are buying these companies up. People jump ship. They leave one company, go to another and bring all their contacts with them. Their dead period expires, and all of a sudden they're on the phone with you. Mike was with this DMS company, that DMS company folded, and now he's with some other company, and you're old buddies, and he's trying to get you into this new reporting tool, whatever the case may be. And you're like, my God, it's the end of the month. Here we go. The vendors are trying to close their month, and you're trying to close your month.

I do have some smart guys out there who try to wrap up their contracts by the middle of the month or the twentieth, get all the business in place and all the contracts written. Then the last ten days are just schmooze time. They call you up: "How's it going?" Those guys are smart. They're not crunching at my end of the month. But it's a lot. Think of a general manager and the number of people pounding on their door, or the sales managers. I get emails forwarded to me from GMs and service managers, and from people who leave the company, and the number of emails they get for this stuff is a lot. I can imagine the typical day of a service manager or a general manager and how much they're trying to fight these guys off with that sword. Every time the phone rings, it's one of them. It's not a customer. It's interesting, and it's getting worse.

Following up without pestering 6:31

Steve Shaw: Well, as a third-party vendor, we definitely fall into that category, but like I said, we don't have quotas. I'm not cold calling. I don't cold call anybody. I did have a person email me on a Saturday. A prospect found one of our landing pages and wanted advisor training. I sent him a quick email and said, "Hey, I'm out playing. It's Saturday, it's the weekend, and I'm on travel. How about I give you a call on Monday?" We texted a couple of times, he called me at our prescribed time, and we chatted.

For me, it's a pretty quick deal. You're either in training mode or you're not. Sometimes we're a shiny object: "My dealer was at a 20 Group and heard about you, so I've got to find out." And if it goes cold, because maybe they don't like my price or this or that, I'll generally do a follow-up or two, but I don't pester people. If you know who I am, you know where I'm at. And if you're looking for training, I rarely lose out to other people. So I'm not going to hound someone's phone ten times to get the sale. If you want it, you know we're here, and we're going to do a great job for you. We let our stuff stand on its own. But again, I'm not getting the shit kicked out of me by an investment group to close the deal.

You and I became friends, and I'm friends with a lot of people who haven't bought Steve Shaw training. When I had my event down in the Keys, I invited friends, people I want to hang out with, whether they're clients or not. I like good people. Even if you haven't bought from me or done our training, if you're a good person and you're in the business, I want us to have a relationship, because good people knowing good people is a good thing. I'm sure there's a fine line between nagging somebody and keeping a relationship. That's got to be hard for them as well.

The parking lot ambush 8:53

Dave Rogers: I use the nagging term with my managers sometimes, and I tell them it's a very powerful weapon. Anybody out there who's ever been married or had a significant other knows. I'll speak as a guy, and I say this with respect: I've done stupid things in my life, like climbing up on the roof of my house with a bum left arm and a bum leg to put Christmas lights up, because I was tired of listening to the nagging. It's amazing what you'll do when your spouse is nagging at you. So it's a powerful weapon if you use it right. And there are some vendors out there who border on nagging. They really do.

I was looking the other day, and I've got about three thousand contacts on my phone. Probably half of them are vendors of some sort that I've met over the years. The phone rings, and they're not with the same company anymore. I still treat them with respect. I understand they're trying to make a living. But the tipping point for the fatigue, where my lawsuit is, is this guy emailing me. Very cryptic: "Hey, I met with one of your owners the other day, and he said to call you because he wants you to see this product." Okay. I ignore it, because we get them all the time. I get it again a week later: "Hey, I met with one of your owners again on Monday down at this store, and he said I really need to get together with you, because this is very high on his list."

Now, the funny thing is, I was at the store when the owner was there. There was no meeting. So I call him up and ask, "Can you tell me about this meeting you had with this guy?" He says, "Meeting? The guy was waiting for me in the parking lot. He ambushed me. Somebody told him I was there. It's twice he's done this. He knows my schedule." I said, "Well, your employees are setting you up for some bad stuff. This shouldn't be happening." He says, "Just listen to what he has to say. That would be the nice thing to do." Okay, fine.

So I send the guy back an email: "Set up a Zoom call. You haven't told me what you do. Out of respect, since Dan said to, I'll listen." I guess he sent me back an email that got lost in my inbox. I didn't see it. But basically, they do credit card processing, and he'd been to four of my locations, and by being in those four locations, he could see he could have an immediate impact on my operations. That's pretty amazing. And if I'd send him some of my statements, he knows he could save us money. But he never set up a time for a Zoom call like I asked. So today I get another one, all cutesy, about him trying to work on himself and doing this for his kids. Dude, did we set up the Zoom call? Did I miss it? What are you trying to do?

Stop asking for my statements 11:59

Dave Rogers: I'm not giving you my statements. That's the other thing. I'm so tired of doing all the work for these vendors. This happens all the time, and it probably drives me more nuts than anything. I talk to a company, whether it's a credit card company or an F&I products company, it doesn't really matter, and it's, "Before we get together and give you pricing, can you send us your statements from your existing company?" Well, no. Why don't you just give me your prices? How hard is it to beat a price if you have the price? Show me how much you're going to beat it by. A penny?

I had one vendor, and I love this guy to death, show me the savings at one of our big stores. It was about a $12,000-a-year savings. And I'm thinking to myself, it's not worth the aggravation to unplug one and plug another one in for $12,000. That's a thousand dollars a month in a big store. Do I want to save $12,000 a month? Sure, I'd love to. But it's $12,000 a year in one store. It's not worth the aggravation. And he's like, "Are you impressed with the savings?" No, I'm not.

Why Steve won't pitch a store that serviced him badly 13:18

Steve Shaw: Well, I'm a third-party vendor, a trainer, and I talk about this all the time. I've had such shit experiences with car dealers taking my vehicle in. I rarely complain, because it makes me look like I'm just complaining because you suck and I want a job. I don't even want people to know what I do. I just want to go into your store, be treated like a human being, the VIP Wagoneer owner that I am, and have them do a good job. And if I complain, I'm never going to bring up "hire me." I'm never going to bring that shit up.

When I had to wrestle somebody to pick up and deliver my vehicle, I think the only reason they did it was because I happen to know the owner of the company. It was never mentioned in my email, but I think the service manager went, "This guy knows the owner. We'd better pick up and deliver his car." But I can't complain. I can't say, "I can save you money." And quite frankly, you go into a store like that, and you're like, "You suck, and I don't want to be responsible for the fact that you suck. I don't want to attach my name to you." Because if you were really interested in improving your performance, you would have called somebody, and you wouldn't suck so bad. So I'm never bringing it up. But if someone calls me, certainly, we can help you improve your performance. It's kind of a double-edged sword on my side.

Dave Rogers: Well, training is one specific part of everything. If you're not bought in for training as an owner or a manager, and there are a lot of people out there who aren't, they're probably not going to see any value in what you provide. And that goes for these other vendors too. There are AI training vendors, the micro training, as you called it. Everybody's touting them. They're online. It's the new shiny object. And I have my training program. I like what we're using. I'm not going to say it's the best in the world, but it's the best for our organization at this time. And I don't see any point throwing another program on when, let's be honest, fifty percent of the people don't really buy in anyway.

It goes for anything. If we don't do the basics, I'm not looking for advanced algebra if I can't do basic arithmetic. If I can't do addition and subtraction, fractions and decimals, advanced algebra is not going to be my class. People understand that. I have thirty-plus stores. They're not all in the same location, they're not all the same and they're not all at the same level. That's where one size does not fit all.

AI hype and a 30-hour search for reporting 16:18

Dave Rogers: Just like the warranty company. We talked to that one young lady one time, and I keep hearing about the latest and greatest with this warranty company. I'm not going to bash them. They have a product, they're good at what they do, and they charge three or four percent of what they collect. So do the outside services I use for warranty. There's nothing special about what they do. Yet every time I see the ad out there, it's "You've got to check this out, because they use AI." It's funny how many human beings work for this company if they only use AI. I just heard of another woman who used to be a warranty administrator at one of our stores who works for them now. And I don't knock them. There's a valid business model for an outside company to do my warranty. I don't need smoke blown up my ass, though. Every time you do one of these reviews with them on a Zoom call, you're like, "Okay, you just wasted an hour of my time."

Some of these things are cool. Some of the voice technology is really cool. I'm not sure yet what separates each of the vendors, because I think there are differences in what's good, bad and in between. Then there are the email vendors with your CRM. Some of the stuff is supposedly baked into the CRM, and then you find out there's a different menu you have to go into, and when the salesman clicks the box on one side, it doesn't click the box on the other side. And you're like, well, then I should have just used a separate vendor. Why did I use the CRM one? It's all these little stupid things. Once you sign up for something, you're like, "Jesus Christ, this ain't so great." And then they wonder why you don't sign up all thirty stores at one time.

And the reporting tool. I've been going back and forth since Dynatron changed the EBIS program. I liked EBIS, and it was fairly reasonable, three hundred bucks a month. I get it, they changed their business model. But I've been trying to find a reporting solution to replace it, and Jesus, the number of options out there and the prices are ridiculous. Then you're trying to get a contract signed, and it's two years. That's another one taking up a ton of my time. I think I finally found one that would replace the Dynatron reporting they got rid of. I got such a great price on all-inclusive reporting for the whole store that I'm trying to get the owners to sign it. Why sign one for three hundred dollars when you can get one for eight hundred that does a hell of a lot more? If I can get that for the extra five hundred bucks, that's what I want to do. But the number of videos and Zoom calls I've seen on that... I must have wasted at least thirty or forty hours looking at reporting. It's crazy.

A season for buying and a season for selling 19:24

Steve Shaw: We were having a conversation offline about how it's the middle of summer, and we've got to sell shit. We've got to close the month. It's July right now, and by the time this airs, it might even be August. Who the hell knows? I've lost track of time. But we've got shit to do. And I really started reflecting on the season of selling we talked about.

The season of selling should start toward the end of the year, as you're winding down your year and reflecting on how you did, good, bad or indifferent. Then I'm preparing to move into next year, and I'm looking for that new shiny object that's going to take me into next year. So we have the convention. We all go there. That's the Super Bowl, and we all look for all the shit we need for next year. Then that season needs to wind down by March, because now we've got to have all our pilots in place, like spring training. That way we get ready for April all the way through October. That's our make-our-money time. There should be a whole thing in the car business about the seasons. And don't fucking bother me in the middle of August to sell me a new pilot, as if I've got time for it. I've got shit to do.

Dave Rogers: Well, that's part of what we're talking about. You've got the summer, which is the busy time of the year, and you're also shorthanded. You've got vacations going on. At least on the East Coast, you're busy. This is when people are traveling and going on vacation. Right now we have three openings in major fixed ops positions that have to be filled. So when I tell people my schedule's full, my schedule's full. I'm not trying to jerk anybody around. I just don't have time sometimes for these things. And what was a priority three, five or six months ago, when I was at NADA looking at stuff, is not a priority right now. Other stuff has taken priority over it.

The men and women in the stores trying to run them are probably bouncing half the stuff to me anyway, which I don't mind. I'd rather take it off their plates, because they're in the trenches, and I want them to sell. But you wonder how much of this stuff is distracting everybody from their job. Their job is to service cars, sell cars, do F&I and sell some parts. Their job is not to entertain vendors who seem to have opened up this floodgate, where they feel like they're entitled to be seen. It's pretty amazing to watch. And it's a hell of a lot worse than it was fifteen years ago, or ten years ago.

Steve Shaw: Well, the convention doesn't get smaller. There are more and more people entering the AI space, or every space. It's growing and growing. Funny, if our service advisors sold as well as the vendors do, let's call it a day.

Dave Rogers: Even your salespeople up front. It's not like the old days, when it seemed like everybody had a quota, everybody had a number they were going for, and the end of the month really meant something. I see less and less of that now. I was talking with a couple of stores today that are almost at their objective for new car sales, and there didn't seem to be any incentive to go much over it. I'm like, "Well, if you sell a couple more cars, isn't that a good thing? We'd have a few more cars on the road to service." And they're looking at me. It is a good thing, as long as you don't lose money. I don't want you taking short deals. You can pick and choose once you hit your objective. But it was never like this. You'd run through the finish line. If my number was sixty and I hit seventy or eighty, that was great. Now they don't want to hit eighty, because they don't want to have to beat it next year. Everyone's pacing themselves.

Steve Shaw: "I don't want to look too good."

Dave Rogers: And we do have some car lines where they say, "I'm going to beat it by one, and I'll hold the rest of the deals until next month." And I know there are some service and parts guys out there listening who go, "Yep, we do the same shit. I'm not going to crush last year's number, because you're going to expect more from me next year." Or, "I need a jump start on next month. August gets slow at the end, Dave. People start going back to school."

Steve Shaw: I've been working with my buddy Claude, and based on your comments, we're creating the service advisor excuse book, or the service manager excuse workbook. It starts out with, "Man, we were just slow. We had a slow start." And the other side is, "Man, we were so busy, we just got buried today." Then it's tax season, it's vacation. There's an excuse, and a reciprocal for that excuse, for every freaking thing.

But you and I talked about this months ago, when we first started. Don't you want the fucking check? You can't pay me enough. I want to make as much money as humanly possible. If I've got to show up for thirty days or 23 days or whatever that number is, I want to collect as much money as I can in those 23 days. And this drives me nuts: why would we open our doors on a Saturday for a half day? You've got to get out of bed, you've got to do your morning routine, and you're not going to get home until two or three anyway. So why the fuck don't you just blow it out, make Saturday a full day, and let everybody make a living and make it worth coming in? Wouldn't that be the thing to do, instead of seeing how easy we can make it?

Dave Rogers: I don't understand why in the summer you don't open your service department at 6 a.m. on a Saturday, get everybody in, get their cars done and get everybody out of there at one or two o'clock. It's a full day. The people coming in to get their car serviced want to get home and do their chores, their to-do lists, the Saturday stuff. There's no reason you have to open at eight. They always open an hour later than during the week, which makes no sense. It's the day everybody's up early. I wish they were as aggressive as these vendors. I really do wish the fire hadn't gone out in a lot of people. Maybe that's what aggravates me too.

Steve Shaw: Maybe the vendor needs to become the fixed ops director. Offer the vendor the job as service manager. That's the ticket right there.

Dave Rogers: You know what? I might do that. I've got a couple of openings. That's a great idea. I'm going to give them a call. "Hey, you want this job? I've got a nice job for you."

Steve Shaw: Steady pay. Good pay.

GM tip: put one person in charge of vendors 26:06

Dave Rogers: That's it. Anyway, let's wrap this one up, because I'm sure we lost half the audience around minute two. The GM tip of the day: take a look at your vendors, and really take a look at what you're paying for. The people in your store are getting a lot of solicitations. I think you have to have a meeting about this and talk about it.

I was going to tell a story. My first couple of days as a parts manager, I never realized the extent to which those guys get hit up by vendors. I answer the phone, and it's this slick, fast-talking guy from California, the typical infomercial voice. He's talking about me buying a case of Bright Clean, and I'm going to get a leather Jeff Gordon jacket and all this other stuff, and he's going round and round, and all I need is a PO number. Real fast-talking jive. And I said, "Stop, hold on. How much is a case of this stuff?" It was eighty bucks a can, for twelve cans. I said, "Is this what you do all the time? You really sell this stuff? Is that how it works?" He's like, "Yeah. The last guy who was there had me going. He was going to order, he just had to check with his boss. I figured you were ready to pull the plug." And I said, "You know what, man? I'm a Dale Earnhardt fan. Get the fuck out of here." And I hung up on him.

Eighty bucks a can. And over the years I've heard of it happening a million times, where you get a fifty-five-gallon drum delivered for twelve thousand or ten thousand or eight thousand dollars, because somebody actually gave the guy a PO number, and they won't pick it up and they want their money. I don't think all vendors are like that. But you have to get a grip around it. There should probably be one person in a store who makes these decisions, and they should be discussed at your weekly meeting.

So the tip of the day is: you're a GM, take some of the load. Let's see what they're getting, and put the kibosh on it. I keep hitting unsubscribe, I keep hitting "leave me alone," and I'm still getting the requests. The quarter million dollars in funding I get offered every day... if I'd accepted this quarter-million-dollar funding thing, I could have retired already.

Steve Shaw: That's the best. "Yes, we have funding for you." Thank you very much. Take the money and run. If you could only do that, that would be the ticket.

Dave Rogers: Can you imagine that? All the funding. I have to pay it back? Is that how that works? So anyway, that's my tip of the day. Somebody needs to be in charge of this stuff. You have to look at it, because it's a distraction. It's taking people away from their job. There really should be only one point person in every store who makes these decisions, if you have to make them at that level. If not, kick it up to me, and I'll take care of them. I'll make them go away.

Steve Shaw: All right, sounds good. Let's get out of here. I'll talk to you later.

Dave Rogers: Bye, brother. Have a good one, man.