This is the 30 Days To Sell Cars Podcast transcript. In this episode, I am quite excited to have the privilege and the honor to introduce you or reintroduce you to nothing less than a legend in the automotive training space. Mr. Duane Marino the man behind the revolutionary sales solution called low selling. You're not going to want to miss this show.
Hi, my name is Sean Cassy. I'm obviously excited, as you could probably hear my voice, to have the opportunity to chat with Mr. Duane Marino. For the benefit of our listeners, Duane is the founder and master trainer of Duane Marino Automotive Solutions. A company that provides leading-edge, off-site and on-site automotive sales training that have for ultimate goal to help its students and adopters achieve, listen to this, twice the sales in half the time.
Duane was kind enough to take some time off his busy schedule to join me on the phone to answer the questions our members on 30 Days To Sell Cars have submitted. Now, if you've been living under a rock and you don't know yet Duane and his work in the automotive field, listen to this. Joe Girard, the number one car salesman in the world, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, who could have had anybody in the world to share a talk he was asked to give the Automotive Hall of Fame in Detroit, picked Duane to share the spotlight.
Joe also calls Duane a good friend and the new real deal. That alone should be enough for you to drop whatever you're doing right now and give Duane's answers your undivided attention. I know I will. Without further ado, let's go now join Mr. Duane Marino on the phone for this interview you're not going to want to miss. Duane, thank you so much for joining us on 30 Days To Sell Cars today. I really appreciate you taking the time.
Duane Marino: Hey, Sean. I'm excited and honored to be here. I really do appreciate the opportunity to connect with you and your listeners. Thanks for having me.
Sean: Duane I'm sure that with the wide spectrum of your company's sales curriculum, questions must come in all shapes and colors when you're invited to share your views about the car business, right?
Duane: Yes. We get everything from owners of dealer groups trying to figure out a way to create consolidated processes across the groups. We've got some consistency from store to store for their 10 or 150 dealerships right down to somebody who's starting off in the business, quitting their job, maybe leaving school and looking to see if they should be a service advisor or a salesperson or what is going on with the car business right now. We've got the full spectrum of clients and inquiries on a pretty much daily basis by email or through the websites or calling in.
Sean, it's A to Z, for sure.
Sean: I know that when I learned there might be an opportunity to have you on the show, we immediately surveyed our members. To our surprise, they wanted to pick your brain on social media marketing and lead generation. Now, I say to our surprise because we thought that as an authority on automotive sales, it would have been normal for them to associate Duane Marino primarily with sales training but I have to say that you've done quite a masterful job at leveraging social media to build your personal and corporate brand.
I guess that's what you're also starting to be seen as an expert for. You have a new podcast, a thriving YouTube channel that must put to shame many of your competitors. Your Instagram's buzzing and you've been on Facebook forever. Can you tell us a little bit more about your own experience and the process to reach that level of presence on so many channels?
Duane: Yes. Social media, obviously, is a way to connect, it's a way to create awareness. At the end of the day, we're selling to human beings. You really have to look at your target market and figure out what their wants and needs are, what would they be entertained by, what would they be turned off by and develop that awareness in the marketplace. Your pipeline, as a salesperson, starts with awareness. If I was to say, "Hamburger." Most people think of McDonald's.
If I say, "I cut my hand, can I please have a bandage? I got to blow my nose, can I have a tissue or no? It's going to be a Kleenex." In the old days, you said, "Would you please Xerox this." There's a lot of hamburger companies, there's a lot of pop companies. If I said, "Soda pop or soft drink." Most people say, "Coke or Pepsi." The goal of social media is to get yourself to a point where they actually start to associate you, the buying public and your network of friends and contacts, they associate you not just with the brand, but with the service, the products.
When they look at a car, they think of you. When they think of you, they look at cars. For low cost, high impact and ability to connect with a lot quickly, social media obviously has transformed how we do business. We still mail. Believe it or not, we still fax our clients, we still phone, we still do in-store visits. We do all of that. For massive reach and scope, low cost, you really can't beat, for a salesperson or individual, social media. It's got to become an important aspect of what you do.
Maybe not the only thing you do but you've got to definitely focus on it, give it the attention because it's not going away obviously.
Sean: I absolutely agree with you 100%. How hard is it for you, Duane to make sure that you are omnipresent and constant on social media? The rest of your work didn't go away. You still have to train, go on the road, create programs. In fact, everything you used to do before social media's still there. How do you just add the extra work on top of the already existing things that need to be done?
Duane: People will make time for whatever they feel is important. You'll go to the gym if you think it's important. You'll spend time with your kids if you think it's important. You have to give things like social media and building your business which is really the end goal, the weight and the importance that it deserves. If somebody is going to be-- I like using bizarre, stupid examples, okay. Forgive me audience. If you suddenly had a very quick and instant desire to go to the washroom, which either number one or number two, and you just had no way out of it. I don't care what meeting you're in.
I don't care where you are. You're going to find a restroom, you're going to find a washroom. You have to really look at social media as something that you've got to give that sort of urgency to even though, like you said, your life keeps going on, you're still selling. I'm still on the road doing seminars and speaking essentially five to six days a week most weeks. I still have to find time to get the posts up, have my social media team do that for me many times or create the original content. You just have to decide.
You got to make a decision that this is priority. You're going to use this as one of the many ways to build your business but the decision has to be made. You can't vacillate. You can't waffle around and go, "Should I? Would I?" Years go by doing that. Just wake up, make the decision. I'm going to go through my idea of what that decision should look like in a few minutes. You just have to clearly put that line in the sand and say, "I'm going for it."
Sean: Now, there's this divide that is starting to take place between the so-called social media gurus and people like you that actually do the work. A lot of people, I see them on LinkedIn, I see them a little bit everywhere, they talk to talk but they don't walk the walk. You go to their YouTube channel, you go to their Facebook page, and what they preach is not reflected in what they do. Now, you're the exact opposite because everything that you preach is exactly what you do and what we can see on your platforms.
Duane: My moto has always been, do it first, speak about it later. I don't speak about it, then do it. I do it for us for a while. I see the pros and the cons. I see how difficult it is. I try to figure out at least passive resistance. I do believe anything that's complex is going to be very hard to execute. Complexity is the enemy of execution. I do first and then I speak on it on everything I do. I don't create-- I don't speak on it and then decide to do it. I try to start from the grassroots.
Sean: Then, you speak from experience. I see that video's obviously an important component of the way you communicate on many of your platforms. Why is it so prevalent in nearly all your channels?
Duane: I think a few reasons. First, people's attention spans are getting lower and lower all the time. You can see it in the way they communicate or sometimes can't. People don't have the time to read anything anymore. They're not interested. Everyone's got WiFi every place they ago. They're jumping on videos constantly, listening to videos when they're cooking dinner. I think the low attention span thing is part of it.
I think you can create a relationship with somebody, maybe that you haven't even met if you're watching them on video because you get the language and the body language and where they express their points. I think it's a little more relatable than the written word. In a lot of cases, if you know what you want to speak on, it's a lot faster. The pace for me to do that-- I've got three books on Amazon. I've got tons of written material on blogs and newsletters I still do, that I email out. You can get a lot of information out quickly, verbally, if you know what you want to talk about.
Because the internet now, and social media, we are able to meet the customer much, much earlier in their sale or in their buying process than we ever could. As soon as they become aware or they get triggered and they start considering something, a lot of people's first move is jump online. Then also, much later because with smartphones and the connectivity of that particular piece of technology and how that interacts with everything we do, including social media and your address book, we're able to keep in touch with people long after the sale cycle and much later in the sale and after they purchase. As far as networking with owners, which again, in my mind, is a component that you've got to put into the same context as social media, is how do you leverage your owner base on a continual basis or people that have purchased from you in the same way you're trying to go after new business with social media. That's the same pot for me. I think it all stems from the same change in psychology and the way that we interact with people over the last five to 10 years.
Sean: Nice. Which of the social media platform is working the best for you these days?
Duane: I have personal accounts and I have business accounts. Some of my followings are spread over that. If you take a look, I've got two or three different platforms or channels or whatever you want to call it, personally and professionally. We find, ourselves, probably Facebook is the one that gets the most engagement. LinkedIn gets a lot of visibility and a lot of you use. It's a very easy thing to track on LinkedIn. From that standpoint, I would say, for us personally, number three would be Instagram. That's probably our top three right now. In that order, yes.
Sean: I see many individuals posting the same content on multiple platforms with little regards to the nuances of each channel. You don't, you understand the subtleties. For example, I really appreciate that your YouTube selfie videos don't have the two black bars on each side because you took the time to record them in landscape mode for YouTube platform instead of just reposting the videos you recorded for your Facebook life. How important is it for you, Duane to create content native to each platform?
Duane: Well, it's your number one goal. Again, you look at old-style advertising if you want to call that, it's not old, we're still doing it, but obviously, it's falling off. A radio ad was never written the same way as a TV ad, it was never in the same way as a newspaper ad. You've got to take that in consideration when you're posting it. Certain types of formats or posts are more appropriate than others.
I spend a lot of time online. I look to see what engages me. When I'm on those platforms and what's good and that, I use myself as generally the first example, that first guinea pig. Then, from there, you start building your own personal style. I don't really watch anybody in my space at all. I don't want to be--
I don't want to use the word contaminated or influenced and start to look like a knockoff of somebody else. I don't follow anybody in my space. I will follow people in other industries. I see what works for them. Then, I bring my personality and my skill set into what I want for my niche.
Sean: Duane, now that you've shared with our listeners how you are leveraging social media to build your brand and create opportunities for yourself and your company, our listeners would like to ask you what they should do to generate more ups and opportunities to talk to potential vehicle shoppers. If they're part of a dealership where management doesn't have, let's say, pedal to the metal when it comes down to marketing.
Maybe we can break the answer into three categories for people, let's say, just starting up, intermediates, and then maybe advanced social media marketers. Let's start first with what you would do if you were in the shoes of someone that hasn't yet really started using social media to build their personal brand. What are the first steps? Where should they focus initially?
Duane: That first step in anything I instruct all of those people on practically a daily basis. Those are very good categories you just laid out. The first step for somebody is to realize the importance of technology. I find a lot of people of all ages either have not taken the time to understand a smartphone, understand how people are researching information today. Something you don't know, you're naturally afraid of.
Get yourself onto social media first off, and start to pay attention to what people are doing and get your fear out of technology, if it's still there, out of the way because we're almost soft cyborgs now. A lot of people, if you lose your smartphone, they don't know the phone numbers of their friends and family or they're just contacting their friends through direct Messenger on Facebook.
We need this technology practically to live and survive in our society. It's probably going to go to implantable soon. Please, everybody, get over the fact that technology is now part of our life. Your phone is an appendage, and your phone is an appendage of your customers. They're on it all the time. You've got to first get that, I think, understood. The next thing I talk about in the course is the importance of apps.
You go through two or three stages here, if this makes any sense. What I like do for the listeners is give them 10 apps that they should download because these 10 apps are going to also help you with integrating technology in your sales process. If anybody has any questions, I'm sure there'll be some information at the end of the podcast, how to get hold of me directly.
I'd like to just list and write down these 10 apps if I could. I'll go through them quickly because these are going to help you with your social media posts and with connectivity with clients. Google Maps Street View is a great way to get to know your customers a little bit better if you have a home or street address or where they're working.
Maybe that'll engage them a little bit but also understand your customers better. The next piece of technology is Google Duo. Google Duo is a video platform. It doesn't matter if you're on Android or an Apple product. You can do video chats which is becoming increasingly important instead of a phone call, showing products remotely via video. That sort of thing is everything from selling a home to a hot tub, to a car. Going to be more relevant for more people.
Google Earth is another one you can use to develop proximity rapport and understand the general area in which your client is calling from or where they live. Your next stop obviously, is a regular calculator. There's lots of little things you do with the calculator during the sales process to help quickly qualify a customer. Give them some idea of what these numbers may look like for them.
Taking your numbers up to a next level with your client and increasing your pace of sale and reducing transaction time is a finance calculator. A lot of your customers are having to finance their products with you when they buy, particularly early in the automotive space. Having that on your phone, just give people approximate numbers, never exact numbers. To speed up the pace of the sale and make it easier for your client.
Maybe not have to go back and forth with the manager for 45 minutes if you just have a simple question on approximate numbers. A business card uploader, it's called CamCard. There's lots of apps that do these besides these. CamCard's a great one where you take a snap of a business card. When CamCard's open, it imports the card and all the address information in your address book.
Google Translate will allow you to have multiple language conversations with clients. Google Translate is now a must have with all that's happening with the diversity in all of our markets, you need that. Turbo Fax, you actually can send and receive faxes from your phone, if somebody's still interested in doing that via whatever type of document you want. Two left. One is called Text Now.
Text Now has the ability to give somebody a separate phone number they can call or text from and to on your smartphone without giving people your actual permanent cell phone number. All these apps are free. The last app is Tiny Scanner. This is a scanner that you can use instead of a desktop scanner on your phone. You can scan in documents and either use them to upload to your social media or actually to do transactions back and forth with clients.
Sean, the only reason I'm going through that is I go through those in a seminar. I spend almost half an hour on them sometimes. The integration of technology and the way it's overtaking, that's three or four industries that are now being wiped out because of this smartphone. The impact on this has got to be understood. The next thing if I could, talking about people that are also a little bit new, is I would like to give you a very simple posting routine.
In terms of what to post, how to post, and how to have impact and engagement with your clients. If that's okay, Sean?
Sean: Absolutely. Go ahead.
Duane: Basically, three steps here. First one is, again, you always want to make everything as simple and as fast as possible. You're probably going to sign up for Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter. I don't know what you might use, Snapchat. There's always new platforms coming up, or whatever they are, your top four or five. You want to clean up your personal one and/or do what I did and create a professional account.
People don't see everything about your personal life you don't want them to. Once you do that and you get signed up and you get those platforms built and you've got the appropriate wallpapers and whatever else and profile pictures so it looks good and it emphasizes your personality as well as what you're selling. Step number two is to download in your app store.
If you're just using it from a PC, you just go to their website. It's called Hootsuite. H-O-O-T-S-U-I-T-E. Now, I'm not advocating any app or any company. I'm just telling you the ones that I know work and that I use. This is a free app. What you do, once you download Hootsuite, is you sign into your social media accounts while on Hootsuite. What this will allows you to do is, when you do a post, you just post one post to Hootsuite and you can push it out to all the platforms.
Now, what this will do if you're doing generic regular daily postings, is drop your posting time. I'll give you what this routine could look like which is going to be pretty effective across all platforms. Beyond that, what you want to do is give some thought, as you mentioned earlier, to YouTube specific, Facebook Live, it's a short Facebook Lives, different types of Twitter postings and stuff that you want to your feed a little bit and Instagram.
Do give some thought on customizable posts that you can do it through the week or through the day. I think it's very important at the bare minimum because one of the things, besides comfort levels that I hear why people don't do this or understanding the technology, is they say they don't have time. Well, everybody's got time to do one post today, especially when you see the post that I'm going to give you.
It takes less than five minutes to do. If you can push those out to your five platforms, then you've got a pretty good broad spectrum posting going on in all your social media accounts. Now, before we get into what that seven-day posting routine will look like, the third major step, besides getting Hootsuite and committing to your daily postings, is to commit to a number.
If it's going to be five a day or 25 a day that you literally can do while you're in the washroom doing your business or sitting down watching TV or at your desk if you want to drain some downtime at work, you commit to a number of friend invites that you're going to send out, friend requests. Every social media platform has, based on mutual friends, dozens if not hundreds of people sitting there that you should probably invite to your platform.
Commit to five or 25 a day on every platform. Now, if anybody's doing the math in their head already. If I made that 10 invites a day on your four or five major platforms, that's 40 to 50 invites a day. 90% of people accept invites without questioning it. If they do say, "Hey, who are you?" You just say, "Well, I was on my social media and I noticed we have some mutual friends. I work at this company. I'm just looking to increase my network. I'm just looking to connect with people." Most people are going accept it anyway because they want to increase the size of their friend list. At 40 or 50 people a day, that means in 10 days it's 400 or 500 people. In 20 days, it's 800 to 1,000. In a month, you're talking somewhere around 1500 to 2,000 people a month that you are inviting to your platforms. You do that for a year, you've got 20,000, 30,000, 40,000, 50,000 people in a year or two that you're connected with just through hitting that friend request button every day.
Sean: Sorry to interrupt you, Duane. I want to stop you here just for a second because I have a little curiosity of my own. This is obviously not your first time explaining this powerful social media posting strategy and routine because you're just so spot on. When you're in a room training a group of individuals on this exact routine, in terms of percentages, how many people look overwhelmed? How many people just roll their eyes? How many people are completely lost? How many people are taking notes like their life depends on the knowledge you're sharing?
What would you say the percentages are?
Duane: Now, I would instruct it a little bit slower than I'm doing here, but people will get it even at that pace. That's an excellent question. I've been at this for a while. I've now been in front of probably 50-- I would say probably closer to the 70,000 people. We're talking back to 1992. You get to see what's going on in a room. I'm very good with body language. There's two pieces of that question that I hear. One is information. Who's getting the information, quickly understanding what I'm saying? It is literally the Pareto Principle.
80% of people look at what I just said as a shoulder shrugging, "Okay, I get it, maybe, sort of, kind of." I would say they're out of the game right there.
One of the 5%, 20% are leaning forward going, "Well, I never thought about it." Probably less than 5% or 10% are keeping a lot of notes, talk to me afterwards and going, "I don't know why I didn't take it that myself." That's the information piece. Then, when they leave, the only ones are going to contemplate executing are the top let's call it 20%, 25%.
When they go back out, of that 20% or 25%, that really the information impacted them and they got it, now we're back to Pareto again, on the execution side. 80% of those people will never be really convicted enough and regimen enough to follow what I'm going to give you next. Then, maybe 20%, 25% will do it somewhat and 5% or 10%, it's going to change their careers.
That information I just gave you and what I’m showing you, you're proposing routine, I have got dozens of salespeople, I wouldn't say hundreds that I'm aware of, but for sure, dozens that have interacted with me through social media and texting afterwards, that this has completely transformed their career. They've stopped waiting for traffic, waiting for calls, waiting for emails and walk-ins. They're now in the position to be able to pursue these people online that are starting to reach out to them and then attract the customer base.
I guess that keeps me in business. I find it demoralizing that many people would execute and get the information. That's my perception of the percentages, Sean.
Sean: The reason I'm asking, Duane is because I want listeners to understand the absolute unfair advantage they can create for themselves using the tactics that you shared and make sure that listeners realize the math that you've explained in terms of connections and posting. If only half of 1% of the 1800 listeners execute, and I think that's the keyword on the strategies that you shared, its mind blowing how they can distance themselves from any competitor, within the walls of the dealership or outside of the dealership because contrary to ads where, for example, if somebody says, "I want to go and match the ad spent of that individual."
They just start spending as much money to be able to catch up. With the posting strategy that you've explained, the work needs to be put in. If an individual goes and posts diligently, to post every single day for a year, that's 700 posts that another person that wants to start catching up needs to do to be able to do it. There's no magic. The work needs to be done.
Duane: If you do the Hootsuite thing I just talked about, you literally did what I just talked about. You only did two posts a day but you posted 10 times a day because the two posts went out on five platforms. Now, you can say you've got 3,500 posts sitting on social media. You actually will get [unintelligible 00:24:21] You'll get organic search rankings. People will be googling your product and your pages will be coming up simply because of the level of high content posting that you're doing and the interactivity. You actually will become a brand.
Sean: Absolutely.
Duane: It's independent dealership and the management team. "Sally and Susan don't support me." Well, they don't need your support through this, you're building up a business inside that business. This is no cost, zero dollars are spent. You're looking at, once you get good, maximum 10 minutes a day for what I'm going to give you, yes.
Sean: You're absolutely right. If people use technology to multiply content to build their brand, not only they become independent from the dealerships marketing efforts, but they also become extremely attractive for other stores that might be thinking, "Maybe there's a possibility here to go and lobby to get that social media rockstar within their dealership."
Duane: Of course. Great point. Good stuff. Now, if we understand the importance of smartphones, connectivity, technology, apps that can make your life easier. Hootsuite, you only have to do one post. Multiple friend invites a day. You get big a market presence. I just want to give you a very simple posting routine and then finish with something to do with your current clients on delivery. This is your seven-day posting routine. A 15-second video would be day one. Video consumption, you started with this, it's going up. People reading things are going down for many reasons.
The longer videos, you'll find engagement drops off. You'll find everybody's engagement drops off in social media. The last thing you want to be when you do these videos is business-like and conservative. You want to have a very natural, maybe almost quirky, but you may not be a quirky personality. A very natural video where, for 15 seconds, you highlight a product and you highlight one feature on that product. You just simply state your name, what that feature is, what the product is. See you later. Have a great day. Make it fun and quirky if you can and do a post every day.
It could be something like this. You're a real estate agent. You've got your smartphone in hand. You go to sell a house that your listing or have listed and you say, "Hey, everybody. It's Duane Marino here. I'm at 375 Maple Av, downtown, Smallville. It's only $349,000 or $1.4 million. If you can believe it, I want to show you something. This house comes complete with--" You drop the camera down. Maybe you drop down with it. Day sports. "That's right folks. Have a great day. See you later."
A car, "Hey, folks. It's Duane here. I'm here at ABC Cadillac. We're looking at the X model. This vehicle is on sale today for $63,500. We've got five in stock.
Come on down. Give me a call. Let me show you something here. You're not going to believe it. For $65,000, you actually get four wheels and a steering wheel." Maybe you won't say that about the product. You go, "Heads-up display." You just pick one feature. With one feature on one product and if it's natural, people laugh. They go, "What the hell?" They watch them and they'll share them. You create an awareness where you become associated with the brand. I would suggest you do a 15-second video every second day, natural. Again, one feature.
I'm being repetitive but this does not have to be involved. The moment you try to look business-like or conservative or stiff, people actually feel sorry for you and they disengage, want to be very normal. Make sense?
Sean: Absolutely, 100%.
Duane: Excellent. Day two, go on Google and type in short, motivational or short inspirational quotes. That's going to be your post. Type it in, create a meme. Doesn't much matter. Just make sure it's not religious. A motivational quote is on day two. Post that to Hootsuite. Then, post that to your five platforms. Day three another 15-second video. Highlight a product. Highlight one feature. Day four, go to Google, type in short, clean jokes. There's thousands of motivational quotes and now short, clean jokes. Type in or again create a meme on a short clean joke. That would be day number four.
Day number five is a video, 15 seconds. Day number six, go to Google, type in shortcut tips or short real estate tips or short, whatever business you're in, hot tub tips. Make that a quote or a meme. Next day is a video. The last one, type in short recipes. Again, do a meme or post. What I'm suggesting here is you, based on that platform that I just gave you or sorry, that formula on those platforms, you don't have to sit there and create and produce and think about what to say. If you don't know one feature on one product enough to do pretty much every second day, you're probably in the wrong business at that time and a possibility, I don't care what you sell.
The other content is coming from Google. It's tips and it's motivational quotes and it's a clean joke and it's a recipe. It's just really the commitment. It's just saying yourself, "This is what I'm going to do. I'm not leaving work or I'm not leaving my home or I'm not going for lunch until I do it."
Sean: You're preaching to the choir here. Your friend Joe Girard must have provided you with a lot of insights on that subject. Nobody will argue that he is the ultimate success in that regard.
Duane: Joe Girard. There's a two day class started at Harvard's Business School, in Harvard. He laughs about it because he didn't finish third-grade school. It's called the How To Market like Joe Girard. What Joe Girard's claim to fame was, emotions. What he realized was, is that every time he would send a card to somebody, a mail or a phone call, it was really an emotional state that he was trying to get them into. His thoughts were, obviously pretty successfully, is to touch their head, touch their heart.
Touching their head means reminding them you're still there and that's what you're doing. Touch the heart is connect with them somehow. If you touch the head and touch the heart enough, over time you lock down their neurology. Every time they think of you, they think of cars in a good way. Every time they think of cars, they think of you in a good way. Next thing you know, they naturally will give you a shot the second time.
Sean: Now, let's say you're in the shoes of someone who has already embraced social media, and who is already making connections on LinkedIn using videos, building his Instagram following, what does the next level look for him or her?
Duane: Part of the social media thing is not just chasing up new business. It's also making sure you reconnect with your current clients. Here's a formula. I do like formulas or routines because once you create that habit and it's a routine, then you're just doing it every day, you're not thinking about it. For the salespeople out there that are listening, this is not new but the application of which I'm going to share with you might be a little bit new in terms of making it a little more effective for you.
Whatever you're selling, I know most of your car salespeople, when you're delivering that product and you're delivering that car or when you're having somebody changed keys in the house or you're installing the hot tub or whatever it is, take a picture with your client in front of the product, thumbs up in a smile with your smartphone. Then, have that phone returned to you from whoever's standing there taking that picture for you, and ask your client on the spot if you could send them this picture.
Most people would like a memory of certain things. This is going to force you to get the correct email address and probably cell phone number as you text this client or email them from your phone. That's step one in making sure you've got all of your owners in your phone. Next thing, when you save their name, a couple of things. When I save a name in my phone when I'm selling cars, in the address book, I'll have the clients first and last name in the first name field. I put in the last name field if they're an owner or a prospect.
When they end up buying from me, I change obviously the word prospect to owner. The reason is, I can go into my phone and just type in the word owner or prospect in the last name and up comes a list on my phone of all my owners, all my prospects. In the middle name, I like to put a customer's hobby, golf, cooking, painting, whatever else and what they bought. I'll put it in, golf, F150, cooking, Dodge Ram. What I can do now is, in my smartphone, independently I can pull up everybody's hobby.
If I'm reading an article or a comic strip on hunting and it was so cute and offensive, I can take a picture of that comic, I can go to my phone, I can type in the word hunting in the middle name, it's going to pull up all my customers that hunt. I can, one at a time, send a text or an email those customers and connect with them and just copy and paste in a comment that says, "Hey, this made me think of you." Connecting personally with a client becomes extremely easy. I also can just type in F150 into the middle name and pull up--
Or Malibu or BMW three series or whatever, and pull up all the customers of mine that either are a prospect or an owner for that product. Give some thought to how you can use your CRM and your address book as a way to create target marketing, either for your product or for an individual. The next step with that picture, that delivery picture. I asked the customer if I can put it on my social media if they can do the same. That's going to make us follow each other and then get permission to tag each other. You need permission to do that.
Now, everybody can know, on your end and their end, that somebody just bought something from you and get that leverages going. Then, the final use of that pic is,you save the pic of the customer in front of their product with you and them, you save that as their contact picture in your smartphone. Every time they call you, you're looking at the picture of what they bought, you're looking at them. If you can remember who they are and they're coming in for an appointment, you can pull up that picture. Every time you call them you're doing the same thing.
These smartphones, between connectivity of social media and just the way address book works and text, they are money makers. I've never seen a tool ever in my 25 years in this business that can even come close to what a smartphone can do for you to understand the apps that I just gave you earlier. Social media aspects and even the connectivity you've got with owners and prospects, they're absolutely incredible.
Sean: Well, I love how you turned a simple smartphone into a powerful, full-blown CRM. If listeners were looking for actionable insight, well, it doesn't get any better than this.
Duane: Here's some insight on this. It's on my websites, in my books and writing. In the car space, I started the CRM business for automotive dealers back in 1995. I literally pioneered CRM. There was no CRM in the car business. There was no term called CRM. I called it relationship marketing software because then, about five years later, CRM started. Now, obviously, I've sold that off and I'm out of that space. I understand CRM extremely well. Your smartphone can be hacked, can be one of the best CRM tools ever just through understanding even how your address books work.
Sean: Finally, let's say you could share your expertise with someone who is already aggressively leveraging on platform, curating content, making connections and doing all the right stuff. What should they have on their radar next to propel their career to the next level and become totally autonomous from the dealership's marketing?
Duane: Two things. I went through them a little bit there with the delivery picture. It is very common for a salesperson to just continually hunt and not farm. They've got to be farmers. You got to take care of your field. The field is your customer base. Repeats and referrals in every business, no matter where technology goes, is the Holy Grail of selling. They're the lowest cost of acquisition. They're the highest profit. The shortest and fastest sales. The less stressed and the most fun.
Please take care of your owners. Stay connected with your owners as much as you can and stop making excuses. Everyone's got a million excuses as to why they can't do something. Just stop making excuses.
Sean: Duane, not that my opinion really matters. I absolutely understand what Joe Girard meant when he said you were the new real deal. You truly are, it's impressive. Now, if our members and listeners would like to learn more about you, your company and how they could use your services to advance their career, where should they go?
Duane: My website is duanemarino.com. Just go to D-U-A-N-E M-A-R-I-N-O dot com. On all my social media and the professional account, it's just simply Duane Marino. On my personal side, I put in my E.N which is my middle initials. Just shoot us an email, call us off the website. We've got a live chat on the website. You can engage there if you want to get in that thread. We're easy to find online. Google is your friend. I'm extremely accessible and accountable for what I do.
If anybody there's listening and wants to talk to me personally about something, I'd be happy to do that. If you want to discuss personal coaching or having one of my trainers come to your company or do our online training, we have the biggest online training video platform behind our paywall in the automotive business and the most modern. Over 3,000 videos less than five years old. Continually refreshing that information.
If you can't make it to a seminar, don't want to talk to us in person, for sure you can tend to everything I've just talked about, including information is gave you there is all available via video behind our paywall. MarinoTV is the name of the platform, MarinoTV.
Sean: Well, Duane it was an absolute pleasure to chat with you today. I'm really thankful. I'm sure our members and listeners have been taking piles of notes and will take advantage of their ability to re-listen to the podcast a few times to grab all the sharp and profound strategies you shared with us today. Thank you so much for your time. It was delightful to have you on the show. I really appreciate it.
Duane: Sean, thanks for having me.
Sean: Well, when I started the 30 Days To Sell Cars Podcast, I promised you quality content. I don't think you could have better actionable insights than the tips Duane shared with you today. I hope you enjoyed this episode and that you will be back for more. Make sure to subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Google Play, and Spotify, so you don't miss the next exciting tools and tactics I want to share with you. Make sure you also leave me comments on the strategies Duane shared with you today. I'm really curious to get your feedback and your success stories.
I will also provide the list of the 10 apps Duane suggested in the shows note. In the next episode, I want to talk to you about chatbots and how they can help you add hundreds of subscribers and generate tons of quality leads every single month using Facebook, JSON ads, and Messenger. It's probably the most powerful, complex lead generation tool I've seen in years to help you reach off-make vehicle shoppers so you can sell more cars. You're definitely not going to want to miss this next show. Until then, I wish you a great week.
Remember that we only have 30 days to sell cars when the month starts. We probably have less than that if you look at your calendar right now. Like I love to say, let's sell some cars.