Bill Tolpa talks exactbids + exactstats
Bill Tolpa of Tolpa’s Auto Parts talks with Chris Daglis and Chad Counselman about his implementation of exactbids and exactstats and the positive impact on his business.
TRANSCRIPT: (you can also download a .pdf version here)
Chris Daglis:
Bill's been using exactbids and exactstats for the better part of this year.
Before we get into that, tell us a little bit about Bill Tolpa for those that may be newer to the industry and haven't met you before.
Bill Tolpa:
My name is Bill Tolpa, from Tolpa's Autoparts in New York.
I've been around for about 30 years now. I was the newbie that used to shake things up and now I'm the old Senior Advisor I guess. But a little bit of my background, I came from the carnival industry, building industry and auto repair industry and drifted into auto salvage. Been here for about 30 years and built the business from ground zero and got involved with ARA New York, ARA National, past president of both and then along my ways co-founded URG which is still in existence today 20 years and co-founded our PRP and group as well in the northeast. So been doing this a long time and happy to be here and just love this business and can't say enough about it.
Chris Daglis:
Thanks Bill. Chad, can you give us a little bit of an explanation of what exactbids is before Bill let’s us know about his experience?
Chad Counselman:
Sure thing. exactbids is remote labor which remotely accesses your bid buddy system and previews the vehicles in upcoming auctions for you. Thus will include filtering the vehicles, choosing the good and bad parts, choosing the interchange numbers, pricing the parts and ultimately allowing Bid Buddy to work the bids out completely for you.
You come in the next morning and you've got a large number of vehicles fully previewed and ready for you to work your auction.
You still work the auction yourself, you still log on to Co-part or IAA website and bid yourself, but the hard work of looking at the pictures is done remotely for you.
Bill has been using exactbids for the better part of this year and he’s here to tell us a bit about his experience:
Bill Tolpa:
Our experience with exactbids has been really good.
I must say that like with any change, you know, there's a couple of…’ripples in the water’. It’s inevitable at the start, but you’re dealing with remote services where the previewers are dialing in our nighttime, their daytime, and they're reviewing our bids for us at auctions. So that takes a little getting used to, but the APS team supported us through it every step of the way.
The biggest noticeable change? It freed up a bunch of my time, because I was one of the guys previewing the bids. As everybody knows, today, it's more difficult to buy than it's been in the past and you have to look at more cars than you have in the past. Add to that we've grown a tremendous amount over the last couple of years.
We DEFINITELY needed something different. We knew we wanted (needed) to get some help, but weren't sure where to turn.
So we said: ‘we'll try exactbids’. There are no contracts so if it works, it works, if it doesn't it's done, with no risk to us. If anything we still end up in a better position because it’s going to make us think about our business in a deeper way than we ever have.
Really the rest is kind of history! It's been about 8 or 10 months now and during that time we've increased from one previewer to three previewers. They are working a lot more hours and giving us a lot more pre-bids to look at. I still finalise the bids but it sure saves all that prep work in the middle. And I can spend basically 2 hours in the morning, rather than 10 hours the day before doing all this work!
Chris Daglis:
Thanks Bill. And I think one of the one of the really important things you just said is that often (not only our industry but generally speaking) we don’t like change. We don't do that so well. With any entirely new service there are teething problems, let's be clear.
However – as we did with you - we work with our customers’ particular needs. We develop.
Our service isn't the same for every customer. It’s bespoke. That’s what makes it so unique and so successful.
Every customer has a different requirement, different needs and they preview slightly differently. So it is important that we fine tune it and we work closely so that we get it right.
Chris Daglis:
You talk about salvage being more difficult to buy, I think everyone knows it. Everyone's got the same problem. How do they look at more cars? How do they preview more cars, and in fact do it properly? I think we're previewing around 165 vehicles a day for you now.
Without that, how would you do it by yourself?
Bill Tolpa:
In the old days, when I started, we used to go to the auction and raise your hand and first those days were pretty successful. Somebody knew somebody that knew somebody that knew somebody, and you kind of got whatever you wanted.
With online auctions, those days are kind of gone, right?
You're competing, not only with other recyclers, but people all over the country: rebuilders etc, which yes, we always did before, but now all over the world. It's become a global market.
So what you have to do, in my opinion, in order to buy more successful cars, cars that produce the profit that you need to be successful, is cast a wider net. Which is what we are doing now with exactbids. Working more sales than we used to work. It's virtually impossible to do unless you have a team of people behind you.
Chris Daglis:
That’s so great. I’ll just hand over to Chad to explain where exactstats fits in to all this.
Chad Counselman:
Well, when we very first launched exactbids, you know, 18 months ago we initially logged in and started to preview cars and realised that the very first customers Bid Buddy settings were not optimised and so I spent probably 6 hours, 8 hours on that first customer and optimised the Bid Buddy settings and realised there was a need for that.
And that's why we ended up launching exactstats. Put simply we’re taking Excel spreadsheets exported from your Powerlink or Pinnacle system and then we're analysing your sales trends, analysing your profitability rates and coming back with settings that we're recommending for Bid Buddy that are custom to your operation based on what you are selling, based on what's generating profit for you and what your goals are.
We actually log in and update the settings for you because they're somewhat complex and then we go to work previewing cars for you and end up with QC scores that are truly optimised and unique for your operation based on the weights that are set up on part types and the multipliers in the background follow formulas.
Chris Daglis:
As Chad said, exactstats - we really fine tune and segment your buying so that you can spend the right money on the right cars. And that means sometimes spending more, and other times spending less. The whole idea there is that the ones you should be spending more on because there's more profit in them you can, based on your numbers. But at the same time, sometimes we want to make it a little bit harder to buy some of those vehicles that are probably not generally as profitable and therefore we want to chase them further and that's where the combination of exactstats and exactbids makes a lot of sense. Because you don't want to just buy the first one of those that comes along, just because it's there and you need some of the parts of them. You want to buy the right one at the right price wherever that is. So that that's the idea right there.
I think you started exactstats prior to exactbids, which I think is a good way to go. Tell us how fine tuning the three tiers of buying and that segmentation has worked for you?
Bill Tolpa:
Well, I think we've done either three or four of those reports. We did start with that first, took a look at where we're at, before we knew where we wanted to go. And there, you know, there's a lot of the numbers, everybody will tell you that, you know, at least for us, it was like, yep, I knew that. Yep, I knew that. And then it was like, Oh, I didn't know that. And so there's always more information in there.
Yes - a lot reports are available in Pinnacle system or you can create your own or there are even different report writers around in the market, however, what you don't get is another set of eyes.
When you do it all yourself all the time, you're looking through like tunnel vision. You look into this pipe, the pipe that you understand. And when you have somebody else look at this, it's like they have a broader vision generally. They'll have some tidbits of information that you either didn't know about, or you forgot, or you just didn't recognize at the time.
So you know, the cost of the reports are, are in the scheme of things for most businesses that handle a lot of cars, relatively insignificant. And the information is pretty invaluable. And it will definitely enlighten yourself. So I would recommend it for anybody that does medium buying and large volume of cars, that it's really a must.
Chris Daglis:
It’s interesting you talk about the numbers in the reports.
We just did one here in Australia. Long story short, now we often look at later model vehicles as the right vehicles to buy.
And when it comes to exact stats, we really look at your numbers. We do some benchmarking, but certainly the key thing is about what do you need to do with your settings to make sure it's fine tuned, or more tuned into your selling patterns.
That's a constant changing evolution, especially today with prices of salvage and prices of parts moving so frequently. What we were able to identify for that customer was that infact his most profitable vehicles weren't the vehicles he had been buying. Being able to fine tune his buying to suit what we found was a total surprise to him. He thought they were doing well. But he didn't know until we ran the numbers and delved deeper. We had that next level of insight. He's spending $200,000, you know, a quarter on vehicles that were actually just breakeven cars, but it's what he thought he needed to do. Because that's what the industry does: buy later model, low kms vehicles.
While yes, most would agree in principle – with our deep data find sometimes it’s not always the case. Depending on who your buyers are and what your sales look like. So this really opened up that vision, as you stated, by putting some different eyes, we've been able to demonstrate very clearly with the data that it's not actually always the same for every facility, we need to be specific. So that's been an eye opener for him. And for us, to be honest.
Bill Tolpa:
Well, I think the auto recycling industry is so wide and so large - from old cars to new cars, that each market is a little bit different. Each recycler is a little bit different. Your processing capacities a little bit different between facilities.
And so you really need to try to understand what works for you, You have to look at what your numbers are - figure out what works for you. Your needs aren’t the same as the guy down the road anymore.
And then the other thing too is that every quarter, there's always some adjustments and some changes. I can tell you what we started with in the beginning of the year and where we're at today is significantly different. We made a bunch of those changes in the middle. And you know, I suspect we're going to continue to make these changes as time goes on. It just it just how it is today. Which is why it’s so perfect that exactstats reporting happens every quarter. Right on time for adjustments and to see what has worked and what hasn’t.
Chad Counselman:
Yes, it’s continuous fine tuning.
exactbids and exactstats are completely 100% custom. There is no cookie cutter approach to what we do. The data drives the decisions, the data drives the settings, and so it's completely custom for your operation based on your profitability in your sales trends.
Chris Daglis:
Yes and as Bill said, the quarterly review that we do, is so crucial to that continuous tweaking. It's a continuous fine tuning of that segmentation, if you like, to make sure that your sales and your buying keep on moving in the right direction. I think it's really, really important.
Let’s finish this up. Again, Bill, we really do appreciate your custom, we appreciate your words today. Your support, it's been great working with you. We've learned a lot as well, which is excellent.
Thank you to everyone for listening.
If you need to contact us you can look us up at www.autopartneredsolutions.com
Chad: Chad@autopartneredsolutions.com
Myself: Chris@autopartneredsolutions.com
Both of us would be happy to talk to you about how we're helping Bill and see potentially how we can help you as well.