My Little Salesman President, Jason Pierce, was recently a featured guest on the Dealer Low Down podcast to discuss heavy equipment marketplaces in the 21st century as well as the history of My Little Salesman. To listen, you can visit the link to the episode below. We've also included a full transcription of the episode on this page.
Or, if you prefer to read the exchange, here's a transcript of the conversation.
This episode of the Dealer Low Down is brought to you by Performance Brokerage Services. Performance specializes in helping automotive dealers buy and sell dealerships.
What's going on everyone. Welcome back to yet another episode of the Dealer Low Down. You've got Brian, you've got Matt, and you've got Rick in studio. And on the phone, we have Jason and Ken from My Little Salesman. How are you gentlemen doing?
Very well, thanks. Doing great.
Well, thank you guys for joining us. Welcome to the show. And just to start off, can we get a little background of what you guys do, how you kind of came to be in that field? Just a little bit of backstory on you guys.
Sure. So, My Little Salesman is an online marketplace for trucks, trailers, heavy equipment, [etc.] We focus on some dealer management tools, as well as some seller side—
Perfect, I drew a complete blank. Great.
That always happens on the podcast. [Laughs]
On the seller side, we have some tools where they can go in and do some searching, saving—things like that. So, basically just very large marketplace for trucks, trailers, [and] heavy equipment. We got started in that back in 1958. My dad and my uncle were working on a logging site. The dump truck they were using to build the road broke down, and they really had to deal with finding the parts they needed way, way far away from where they were. [You can] boil that down into what became a business idea—[a] classified ad pub[lication], which, in 1998, turned into its first online searchable database.
So, back in 1958, were you guys using homing pigeons to send classifieds back and forth or…? [Laughs] [That was] well before the interweb.
Yeah, so it was literally, call Los Angeles, call San Francisco, call Seattle. Have them mail you the newspaper.
So, telegrams and…
Pretty much. Yeah.
That’s amazing.
So, that is not far off.
Yeah. So, did you grow up in the logging industry yourself helping your dad?
I grew up in the printing and publishing industry. We had the largest auction marketing firm in the country for a while. We had, of course, the two publications—a truck and a trailer publication under My Little Salesman name. So, I grew up in logging shows, truck shows, [and at] dealerships.
It was there where I learned that it was actually really a big community, as much as it is a place where people compete. The same guys that would compete on the same street would go help each other out on weekends. Somebody was building a fence or you know, or even in the logging industry. If some guy gets hurt on his logging operations, these people go out and take care of each other. So, it was more of an extended family, I guess is a good way to put it? [I had a] great education that way.
So, just out of curiosity, when you guys started up kind of the marketplace side of this whole thing, did your dad continue on the logging side, or did that kind of shut down as he moved over into doing the marketplace?
Sure. So, he got out of logging way back in 1958 when he and my uncle decided to start this publication. It expanded from logging into construction equipment and general over-the-road trucks in the ‘70s. And then, once we got into the marketplace, he stayed mostly focused on the printing and the other publishing side as we developed the online marketplace, [we] brought in developers into Eugene, Oregon, and eventually moved their headquarters to Austin, Texas, where we can really find a much larger pool of programmers.
Alright! I had no idea you guys were out of Austin, Texas. That's my hometown. Wow. Yeah, you guys are getting all the good weather. So, I am from Austin, Texas. I now reside in Central Michigan because I found a pretty girl and decided to marry her. And now as a result, we're sitting in—
Smart move!
Yeah, well, on days like this I kind of question it. It's rainy and miserable. And you guys are in like, well, you guys have been running the what mid-80s now? [Laughs]
It’s quite pleasant. Yes.
Yeah. Thank you for not rubbing that in. That was—beautifully, a way to put that to not make me feel bad. I made a bonehead move. I should have moved her down there but—oh, well. So, going back to the topic here. Were you involved actively in the business around the turning of the age when the internet came in? And if so, how? What was that transition like for you guys to move from a primarily print application to move into an online presence?
With certain staff, it was difficult. You always have people that—they're in a phase where [they go] “this is what I do, and I'm always going to do it.” And then you have people are like, “Wow, what's this next new thing? This is cool.” So, we practice what my dad learned from [W. Edwards] Deming—a not personally, but studied him the guy in the ‘50s that helped the automakers improve. He studied the continuous quality improvement, so we had a culture of looking at what we do [and] looking at a new way of doing it.
So, the idea of the internet wasn't scary and actually we just started talking about being delivery vehicle agnostic. We didn't even really focus on the internet because this new thing was going to go away, right? It wasn't going to do something but at least it was the next fax machine, the next beeper dispatch. The next whatever. We had always looked at being a kind of—I guess now you'd call it “platform agnostic.”
Yeah, very forward-thinking. So, when did you actually realize that there were other needs once you built this website—this tool that you went from printing to digital, then you started touching on like the dealership side, realizing that there were some management tools for the dealerships—like the leverage? When did that grasp and how did that take off for you guys?
We started to realize it when we actually built an auction platform in the early 2000s. And then started looking at other areas we can grow into and then it wasn't until around 2012 that we really had an idea of exactly how much a marketplace where the seller's inventory exists could go beyond just marketing the equipment—marketing the trailers [etc.]—to actually be helping them manage tools to where—honestly, we’d appreciate that they come to us and do the business for the marketing, but if they came to us to just manage their marketing, we'd be more than happy with that as well because we put tools in our system that analyzes what we do side by side with what they do on any platform. We don't have contracts, so we put our money where our mouth is literally every day. If we're not providing value, they can just walk.
That's kind of a nice transition. [Most definitely.] What tools do you guys offer and what do you do on that side of the business? Because that is a pretty big departure—it seems like—from just being an online marketplace to where you're actually doing things for dealerships. What do you guys offer?
Sure. So, we started off with data feeds. And as we were taking these data feeds from other business systems—whether it's an ERP or an inventory management [or] accounting system—that kind of thing—we discovered that we had about 80-90% of the tables of these other products that were out there—so, the data table behind the scenes.
We started off with a customized CRM. In our industry, even though there's Salesforce, there are a number of other large tools out there. What we found was these are companies that a lot of them are—not computer illiterate, because you watch them on their cell phone doing business and they are masters of using that—but they are fearful of taking on a technology. So, we went out and started talking to them and asking them—what do they want, what do they need? Well, they did need a CRM but they needed it to actually reduce overhead, reduce time, [and] not require an admin assistant to do all of the upkeep, etc.
So, you guys kind of customize it to their needs.
We did. And then we attach[ed] that to a deal flow where—as they acquire a piece of inventory, they can track all the costs. Whether it's in a pre-sale condition. Where they can start to market it. Whether it's live and available to the public. How well that performs on our platform and on other platforms all the way into—[let’s say] they get a lead [and] the guy says, “Yeah, I want to buy it.” They [can] click a button and it starts a deal flow that automates their paperwork and cuts what could be an hour and a half-to-two hours—they tell us—for paperwork down to reviewing about five screens and hitting submit, which takes a matter of minutes.
Yeah. Time is money. It’s valuable.
So, how has how have you seen the market respond to that kind of new product offering? Kind of getting outside of your original scope? How's the response been?
Sure. Pre-COVID, it was absolutely silent—like crickets. We had guys say, “Yeah, that's great, but I'll never adopt it.” And then when they suddenly couldn't go face-to-face with their customers, when they suddenly couldn't have people on their floor—their sales floor or on their lot. Then, all of the sudden, some were panicked. More were just looking around [thinking] “Okay, how do I operate my business?” Then it was kind of, “Well, like I've been saying…”
[Laughs]
It was very lucky for us. We had a platform that they could literally run their dealership and, [even] not at the dealership, down to the QR codes that went on the inventory items so that a buyer could come on the lot and flash the QR code, get the listing up, have a little button that says “Call Me” and the guy that's you know, locked behind the glass in the office can tell him all about it.
Oh, wow. Very nice. That is exciting. Now, how do they integrate with each other with the marketplace and using these tools? What's the experience for the dealerships to utilize this?
Well, it's a lot smoother. They have a lot more management control and visibility over what they're looking at than they had before. So, let's say they were using three or four systems. They got three or four dashboards. They have three or four places they have to go and look. I go check my inventory over here. I go check my marketing over here. My sales paperwork is in a pile because my sales guys turn it in[to] paper. Instead of that, they're actually in one dashboard. They can see everything related to their sales and marketing in one location. That's the biggest change.
So, you mentioned things really took off for you guys on this site during COVID. Now that we're in post-COVID and everyone's kind of able to get in front of people again, have things tapered back off, or now that the ball is rolling and people are seeing the value, has continued to be a positive for you guys?
It has been positive. We've seen our largest corporations come on and adopt our solution. What we're using, we had some get off of other CRMs, come on to ours, move out of other systems, or ask us to kind of blend the two—where we integrate and feed data back and forth between their system.
Wow. Alright.
[That’s where we]actually continue to go.
Do you foresee this ultimately kind of becoming the primary breadwinner for you guys over the traditional marketing platform or do you see those as kind of just being a hand-in-hand?
We kind of see them separate and integrated. So, the way we are continuing to develop is to make it so that somebody doesn't have to come on and take the whole enchilada. If they just want inventory marketing and the marketplace, that's fine. We can put that together. If they do their own private marketing—they don't use any marketplaces, but they want the deal system—that's great. If they just want their website with integrated tools so their team can log in and do it all through their website, we do all that. So, it's really trying to go back to that original idea where my dad and my uncle had to run all over the place to find parts when really they needed to be focused on building that road. So, we go meet the dealers [and] go meet the sellers where they are, let them do what they need to do. We’ll continue to educate and obviously we want them to adopt more, but really, [to] meet their need right now and get them out back to selling equipment—selling trucks and trailers.
Very nice.
That's where they make their money.
So, through the years—since you guys are hardcore right in the middle of the equipment trade industry—how have you seen that marketplace change over the last 10-to-12 years?
[There’s] a lot more reliance on data tracking—even in the last few years. [There’s been] a lot of consolidation happening over the years where we see the small dealerships pop up and then large corporate goes on a buying spree and starts to buy them. That cycle continues.
The biggest change probably is an awareness that the old school [notion that says], “If I put ‘Price [Available] on Request’ on here, they'll call me and I can tell them and then that way maybe I can make a few extra bucks”—the realization that that's gone. That little thing called the internet, it did finally catch on and people can search everywhere and find out exactly what you should be selling that piece of equipment for.
So, we're working more on teaching them how to enhance what they have—described it better, things like that. The sellers becoming more savvy that way as well.
So, I do want to circle back. You mentioned one of the things that's changed is data tracking. What specifically—when you talk about data tracking—what things are you tracking? What are people paying attention to and how is that benefiting them in the marketplace?
Sure. The old school [idea from dealers] was, “I just need my phone to ring,” right? I need to get it to ring as much as possible. Where things are trending is people are actually looking at their sell-through rate. So yes, I want my phone to ring. Yes, [dealers are thinking] “I want email leads. I want people to come into the store. But if I put all my of all my inventory on this marketplace versus this marketplace, this one makes my phone ring 100 times more, but this one over here sells just as much inventory,” then they can start to understand where their real value is.
Interesting.
So, that's the biggest, biggest tracking.
And then looking at trends in what's actually selling. So, because of the focus on sell-through, they're also looking at [for example]—let's go back to the equipment dealer. You've got a wheel loader and you've got a dozer on your lot. The wheel loaders are selling at two and a half times the rate of the dozers. They're at a lower profit point. But at the end of the month, your net overall is more on these wheel loaders. Well then, yeah, you want to keep moving and acquiring wheel loaders [and] maybe not acquire as many dozers to keep on your lot because the sale time is much longer. So, they're looking at those things as well.
Interesting. So, let me ask you; there are a lot of online marketplaces for equipment. What sets My Little Salesman apart from some of these other equipment sites?
We think we do it better. I mean…
Elaborate on that. [Laughs]
It's a little internally focused, I guess. Externally, we are very interested in meeting the sellers where they are—and it sounds a little cheesy, but it's actually listening to how they do business. We don't tell them to use our system, “You have to do it our way.” I know a number of the other marketplaces say, “Well, if you want to use this then you have to log in three times a day to update your inventory—etc.—or you'll be downgraded.” There are some things like that in the industry. We try and make it so that you don't have to log in if you don't want to. Obviously, we want use our system, but if you prefer one of the other platforms to ours, we’ll just take a data feed. So, the things we try and do is to take it back to that original model—make it as simple as possible. Make it as clean as possible for the people—not the extra work. And then on the buyer side, we’re really studying how the buyers come to us, how they use the system—constantly. It’s this constant, never-ending cycle of enhancing and updating and playing with that, so that they find immediately what they need and can access the seller as quickly as possible.
So, how do you guys keep setting the bar? Obviously, it seems like it could come very complacent with this CMR…CMU…software sorry,—CRM software. [Laughs] Sorry, we’re dirt guys. How do you guys keep setting the bar and pushing this software further and the capabilities further for the end-user?
Our team doesn't sleep. We just drink a lot of coffee.
[Laughs] Austin is kind of Silicon Valley squared, so you would expect that there.
It's a lot of living in data. When I first started with our company, I used to build these massive Excel spreadsheets. I had to print out on 11”x17” paper even to be able to make the font big enough to capture enough of the data to use. And actually, we have programmers and developers who use databases to get us more information. But it's a constant review of us, competitors, Google, Bing, whatever is going on out there. And then looking for added value off-site. Exports, for example. Marketing through Facebook or other avenues to drive traffic to the site [and] drive traffic directly to the sellers' listings. I honestly don't know how to describe it other than it's what we eat, sleep, and breathe.
That’s perfect.
You have to stay on top of it daily.
Now, that leads me into my other question here: How do you see this turn into the future Dealer Technology Systems. How's this all gonna play out?
A lot more time than we have for this podcast to go through that.
Oh, come on—we’ve got all day. [Laughs]
Well, good—I’ll give you a rundown.
Give us the Clif notes.
Sure. We will continue to add tools for the sellers as well as the buyers. We really see the next evolution of things is [being] building out tools on the buyer side—making it so they can also live in the system if they need to—so, that when they acquire the piece of equipment or as they're going through the purchasing process, right now, they too have to go to multiple locations to get a deal done. We’re going to try and build more tools to integrate that.
Back in the early 2000s, we built an auction software. The data and server farm side of it was way beyond what we wanted to get into, so we tabled that, so we're constantly looking at either somebody we can partner with or our own solutions there. We are looking at added ways we can market.
We're currently integrating certain tools that will allow us to access more of the accounting functionality of other people's software. My IT developer is going to text me any second because he's going to feel that I said this out loud while they're actually developing it and say, “wait, wait, wait, they're going want it now and it's not ready.” [Laughs]
[Laughs] That's classic marketing—you gotta tease it a little bit.
How important is it for the heavy equipment dealers to get involved and get ahead in the digital marketing era?
They won't survive if they don't. The old school brokers that have the notepad or the Rolodex or all that sort of stuff, or it's built just on relationships—relationships are absolutely key in this industry—but if they're not marketing themselves in this real digital way, their income won't grow. Their business won't grow. They may be able to continue with a nice income, but when they go to retire, they won't have anything to sell. So, if they can get the online tools, if they can get the CRM, the inventory management, those kinds of things—even at a broker level. We have one very large broker. He's all over the country. And I was just online looking at his time-to-sale compared to other people's time-to-sale. He uses such a high level of automation that his time-to-sale from inventory coming in and out is averaging 19 days.
Wow.
The other people we look at are in closer to 30 or even I think the 50s. And this is every piece of inventory. It's not just [people saying] “oh, We’ve got trucks and we can't keep you on the lot.” It's everything else that goes with it. So, he’s got two-thirds to one-third of the time-to-sale that everybody has. He has fully adopted our tools plus he has some of his own that he's had built.
That’s interesting.
He’s a pretty impressive customer.
That is interesting. Now, do you see this kind of replacing some salesmen and is more going to be like an automated sales force where it's just going to weed out of the sales [staff], slowly lead them out or is it more of a tool that they just need to adapt to in order to make it better for them?
Yeah, it's like when email came in. I honestly think with the dealerships doing this, they will have a greater volume. So, what it may do and what when we were developing the deal system and talking to them about their sales process—how long it is [etc.]—and talking not just to the GMs or the sales managers, but to the actual sales team, it was [more like them saying], “Man, I could have made two more sales this week if I hadn't had to do all the deal paperwork.” Great. So, you probably have the same number of salespeople, but your throughput can go up.
Interesting. So, let's shift gears because that was really interesting that there was no question in your voice when you said they will fail if they don't get on board with the online marketing—and I 100% agree with that. But I do want to shift gears and talk about how do you guys come into a dealership? What's the process of a dealership contacting you? If they do want to take advantage of some of these tools that you have? What specifically are you helping them [do]? What areas are you helping them [in] and what is that process look like?
The simplest—and where we started the conversations with the marketplace. So, that's getting their inventory in. There are very very few people who don't have their inventory on some marketplace out there. or in an electronic format. The ones that don't, we guide them through the process of how to get it in. Either they can get us a file we can upload or it's literally data entry and we can help customers with that. Then from there, [we can help with] the marketing and tracking of their other marketing platforms. So, let's say they're on three different marketplaces and they have print ads in several magazines. We still find that the print has value in certain markets. So, [we] then get them set up so they can track the phone calls, the emails, and the on-site leads.
Ideally, we get somebody set up and switched over to our custom websites. We build custom websites that integrate fully with our tools so [that] your team can log into your website and use the same tools that you use on our site. [This] helps with adoption when your logging into my-truck-dealership.com as opposed to someone on the sales team. I know you go over here and you're really happy with this marketplace, but you're gonna log into this one use all the tools to track your sales. So, it helps with some adoption and the feeling that this is ours, which we do consider—just as an aside—we consider their data theirs. If anybody ever leaves us we will help them to whatever they're moving to. Again, it's that we have to earn our keep every day of the week. That's just the way our philosophy goes. And then ideally we get them into the CRM and the Deal system.
When we demo the system—especially at the general management and sales management level—the thing we constantly hear is, “Wow, I've never seen this before.” And that's makes us really proud—that we have gotten the solution that is so integrated and so clean for them. That's the fun part. Again, I can talk for another 30 minutes on that.
No, that's great. I mean, clearly, you're passionate about your product, and that's the way you've got to be. And I will say, I've talked about it before, but it's really good when you have someone that is in this industry that's behind the development of some of the tools because one of my chief complaints—when we used Salesforce back in the day—was because it's this kind of big-box solution if you will, you can customize it to an extent, but you're really limited in how much customization you can do especially—when it comes to the complexities that you’ve touched on Like tracking a piece of equipment from the intake of that piece of equipment through the maintenance that has to be done—and then finally to the sale of that piece of equipment. That's really difficult to track in SalesForce. And similarly, on the sales side, there's a lot of things that are really difficult to track. And so it is really interesting to me that you guys are building these tools from scratch specifically geared towards equipment dealers.
For us, it's just kind of how we breathe and do that. The other thing that my dad taught me about business—and it stuck—is “go to the source.” I think a lot of companies develop tools and they say, “I'm a programmer” or “I'm a marketing genius. I know how to do this. If every[one] would just do it this way, it'd be perfect.” But if you go and actually see how the sellers operate their business, what they have to go through on a daily basis, and then really focus on what are they trying to accomplish, they'll tell you what they need. And if you build that, the way they need and how they live, they'll adopt it and love it because you fixed a problem instead of—kind of like I said, way back in the beginning—instead of building a system that they have to hire two or three full-time equivalent employees just to manage and customize and keep updated. That's an added headache to get done what they need as opposed to, “Oh yeah, once my stuff's in there, I can literally do this myself. My salespeople click a button and a Deal was started. And I get notified that I've got a sale in process.” So, that's cool stuff. That's fun.
Now the question I got for you; if I'm a mom-and-pop dealership and I want to get in touch with My Little Salesman, what's the process like? Do you guys come to our dealership, help us get set up, or is it online and we got to force-feed you the information? How do I get set up and how do we get started with this whole process?
Most of the time it's simple enough [that]we can do it from where we are and where they are. The inventory is almost always in electronic format somewhere [and] they can literally email the file to us. The [My Little Salesman] sales team is listed on the website and under Contact Us. Phone calls go directly to those people. We have a “contact for demo” form set up, but truly if somebody has a situation where they're like, “Look, I cannot get on board unless you come show me in person,” obviously we're going to do that. That's the exact piece of, “go to where they are.” That goes back to our philosophy, but most of the time it can be handled with telephone calls and email.
I do have a question that occurred to me kind of halfway through that and I wanted to circle back. I apologize. I'm a little slow today, but a little earlier you said there are still a time and a place for print media. Could you expound on that? Because that one really intrigued me. I would have thought for sure print media is just kind of dead at this point.
Think of it like the remote work sites. So, logging—as one example. Mining might be another example—where they're using radios with repeater towers to communicate because they don't have cell phone service. You don't have cell phone service. You don't have broadband. You don't have internet. You're operating out of the cab a piece of equipment or you're operating out of the cab of the truck. And so with that in mind, if you want to be proactive and search for a piece of equipment in your downtime, the print ad has to be there. So, we distribute our magazines primarily to a customer base that has that need.
Interesting.
We basically look at the cell service maps and look for the holes in the cell service. And that's where you'll find people that need print magazines.
Interesting. That's fascinating. This is where you do get into the kind of the little small things—the nitty-gritty. Just things you would never think of that. I would have thought for sure there would be no value in print publication anymore. The other thing is how many pieces of machinery do you think sells are the print magazine versus digital? Because the logging industry—I’ve been all over My Little Salesman's page for the past 15 years, looking at logging equipment, trucks, forwarders, whatever. And I never knew that there was a printed thing because we had the internet. But could you imagine being in the cab of the machine and you got to click the button to radio out? How many pieces of machinery are they actually buying through the print side? There's something that gets the wheels spinning. Like when I'm going to a diner, walk in, I grab the marketeer. And I'm looking through. I don't have any need for any of the stuff that's in it. But then all of the sudden, I see something I'm like, “Oh my gosh,” and then I put that away. I get home and I go on the internet and I look at real-time stuff and it gets the ball rolling, I think. It's just the old-school nature of just having something in your hands. Is that how you see that?
There was a survey a couple of years ago that we were able to compile information on how many sites buyers looked at on average. I have not done one post-COVID, but it was over 11 marketplaces before they made a buying decision.
Wow. Holy moly.
So, think of that in terms of exactly what you just said with the publication. They get the interest piqued, they look at it, and they go, “Yeah, that's exactly what I need. There's two of them listed here. And the funny little thing about manufacturers—they make more than one or two. So, I'm going go back I'm going go look at the internet. I'm going to type in—not on ‘My Little Salesman,’ not on a competing marketplace, but in Bing or Google,” whatever your search engine of choice is— I'm going to type in that I need this log loader or this skidder and maybe because I'm in Oregon or in Alabama, I'm also going to type in the word “Alabama” and see what pops up. And then they're out there looking at all the inventory, looking at all the different deals pricing, who has more information listed, etc.
Interesting. Well, Jason, any final thoughts? Anything that you'd like to add in? This has been a really interesting informative discussion. Very eye-opening.
I enjoyed talking to you guys. Like I said, I can talk for hours about this stuff. So I do try and keep it short. But I think the thing I would add is just another point about going to where the dealers are, as well as where the buyers are. That is the number one philosophy that has helped our customers and helped us to grow. So, it's where that's kind of our sweet spot.
Now, Jason, if somebody wanted to get in contact with you what would that be? And how?
MyLittleSalesman.com is the best place to get a hold of us. It has information for [contacting] every local salesperson. So our regional salespeople under the Contact Us, it has the direct phone numbers, they can email. If they want a demo, they can click the sign up for demo [button] [to speak to a] live person from actually from our company—not a third party company. We'll call them back.
Very nice. We appreciated it. Thank you for being on the show.
Happy to be here. I really appreciate guys taking time.
Absolutely. It's been a treat and thank you guys all for listening. As always, if you're on an Apple platform, please rating review. That helps us out greatly. Check us out on LinkedIn, feel free to reach out we do love, love talking to everyone. And if you've got an interesting story from within the dealer industry, reach out to us we would love to let you tell your story. That's what we're here for. Thanks for listening and we'll catch you guys next week on the Dealer Low Down.