Question:

You mentioned this idea of investing in yourself the other day, and how that carries through to business continuity as a whole. Many businesses have had to take a sharp look at their vendors in order to find ways to cut budget over this past year. Do you have any insight or thoughts into this?

KRISTEN:

We think a little bit differently at 3 Birds. Pandemic or no pandemic, the industry is always a challenge. Dealers are tough and adaptable, and they weather them. We want to support them and help them with that adaptability. So the way that we've always looked at things is that it's never a mistake to invest in yourself, if you will. 

Investing in yourself has to do with your organic presence. How are you holding yourself out online? Are you investing in your website and quality content? Are you investing in your first-party data? 

The advice that I would give to dealers is...

•  To stop struggling and start strategizing
• To invest in themselves and their team
• To keep a quality communication with your customers and make sure that it is tailored to what they are interested in
• More than anything, to partner with agility

That's what we want to do. We want be the partner with agility who's able to help dealers respond to whatever challenge is coming down the pike, big and small.  Hopefully the next challenge will be "How do we sell all of this inventory that we now have?" But right now, the challenges are a little bit different. So our current focus is - how can we make sure that you have enough inventory. Our great tools and programs have been beefed up just a little bit more to respond to this current challenge of organically acquiring inventory. Our Virtual Car Lot™ is just a more cost effective way to accomplish this.