The TikTok car dealer: Livestreaming negotiations to 1,000s

Welcome to another episode of the Car Dealership Guy Podcast.

Today’s guest is a vehicle acquisition pro who has garnered over 363,800 followers and received more than 10 million likes on TikTok with undoubtedly many more to come. George Saliba (@georgejsaliba) is the dealer principal at J&S Autohaus Group and the owner of SellMyEV.com. In this episode, he discusses his vehicle-buying philosophy and how he’s capitalizing on growing industries.

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(00:41) - How George and CDG connected

(04:26) - Blowing up on social media

(05:56) - George’s career and background

(15:08) - Social Media approaches

(25:51) - What advice would you give dealers to grow on social media?

(26:56) - How many cars are you buying now? 

(31:23) - Do you see dealerships incentivizing salespeople to move cars via social?

(36:53) - George’s future opportunities

(44:04) - Thoughts on the market

(51:01) - Closing thoughts

1. Getting started buying cars.

George got his start in the business as an auto warranty salesperson going dealership to dealership. In 2014, at the advice of his father, he started buying pre-owned Mercedes-Benz vehicles directly from Mercedes-Benz Financial and quickly became their biggest customer. “My appetite for risk is very high and like for me it's fun once you get into [buying], it's a great time,” says George. George ended up leaving that job to help out his family’s struggling Mitsubishi franchise. He learned the business and turned the store around to a break-even point in 5 months.

2. The wild pre-owned EV market.

Then, COVID hit. George caught the virus after coming back from a friend’s wedding and during quarantine, he spent a lot of time looking for inventory and buying cars. He came across a 2020 Tesla Model X performance at auction with 90,000 miles and was determined to buy it despite a fierce bidding war. He bought the car for $91,000. It ended up selling one for $130,000. That’s when the light bulb went off. Back in 2021, there was only one independent dealer George knew of on the West Coast that was selling a high volume of used Teslas. “People were afraid to buy them. We tried buying one like 4 or 5 months prior to that and it was not a fun experience, but I figured it out when I got the car, how to market the car,” George explains. ”It's not even a real secret. You just got to take a picture of the dang software screen.”

3. Growing his EV business.

So George started buying more and more Teslas. 6 turned into 30 which turned into 40 and so on. Now, people are coming to the dealership to sell George their Tesla. He says he always wanted to start an acquisition business, but didn’t want to sit around appraising Toyotas with 200,000 miles on them. He wanted to deal in EVs and snatched up the domain SellMyEV.com. Today, George says inventory is low. For the last year, they’ve maintained a supply of 80-100 Teslas, selling between 40-60 per month. But lately, the EV market has gotten more volatile. “When Elon first dropped those prices, I thought I was done, was done,” he says. The business lost $220,000 over the course of 3 months. But George had the ability to lower the dollar cost average into his inventory. “You just have to like rip the bandit off and keep moving,” he says.

4. Discovering the power of TikTok.

When it comes to social media, George’s friend encouraged him to start posting on TikTok frequently about his experiences in the business. He had around 30,000 followers during the NADA show and was to surprise to find out people recognized him from social media. When he got back, a videographer messaged him looking for work and George took the opportunity take his videos to the next level. In two months, George gained 220,000 followers by simply documenting his days at the dealership. Many people have this idea that TikTok has a “low-quality” follower demographic. Meaning, there are a lot of young users who can’t actually buy a car. But George says that hasn’t been his experience. He says the folks he buys from are really well-established, real people. 

5. Building an e-commerce ecosystem.

Now, George is looking to boost his followers on other social media platforms, especially Instagram because of its fluid e-commerce integrations. “I do a lot of playful things with my customers. I have these cash cards for closers and basically like it tells you an objection on each one. That's another thing I'm really into. I love turning a ‘no’ into a ‘yes,’” says George. He also likes doing live appraisals and generating content that allows viewers to peek inside the business. During one live stream event, George put out a call rail number that connected to his cell phone for viewers wanting to sell their cars. He ended up getting 220 calls in less than an hour. 

6. Processes and distribution.

Right now, George is buying 20-30 a month just on TikTok and growing. The next challenge is building up more manpower to tackle all of the leads coming in. “My next endeavor is to grow this into a monster,” says George. And thanks to SellMyEV.com, he has formal processes in place to buy any car across the country at any time. And with social media, “now I'm able to control the advertising I'm doing and control the marketing dollars I want to spend. I've never boosted anything on any social platform because it's amazing content,” he explains.

7. What motivates George.

The key is consistency. “Motivation and attitude and all that kind of stuff, that's what's gonna drive you to be any successful in kind of anything,” says George. So, where does his motivation come from? Building new things. He has plans to create a online sales group where people sell cars, possibly buy merchandise, and join a sales community. “It's been crazy because now that I've built a buying team, I have to build a social media team to get people to reply to the comments, the DMs, the messages and that's like a new sales team in its own business, which has been really, really fun actually,” he describes.

8. Leveraging social media for business growth.

But social media isn’t the business model. It’s a tool George is using as distribution to drive traffic back to his business. “There is monetization that you earn, but it's getting really minimal nowadays. I just find that it's getting less,” he says. When it comes to content creation, George says he wouldn’t mind being someone like Alex Hormozi who has his own business but take viewers behind the scenes for a transparent look at how they do things. “It is my goal to have 30 buyers working for us across the country and taking over 100 cars a week to the auction every week. It’s a true passion,” says George.

9. Managing high lead volume.

Right now, George is retailing 400 cars per month and wholesaling about 200. His team is using Accu-Trade to calculate offers faster, but eventually, he wants to move everything to Manheim in efforts to become a “huge buying machine.” But capacity is a challenge right now. The business has over 2,000 leads coming in every month. George used to focus only on Teslas and electric cars, but his team is getting a ton of leads for a wider variety of cars, including luxury brands like Lamborghini and Bentley. This has caused their Tesla inventory to shrink due to both time constraints and a lack of manpower to handle the influx of leads. He plans to expand the business to include these exotic cars in a new store with a unique showroom experience.

10. Selling cybertrucks on TikTok.

In the coming weeks, Tesla cybertrucks will be available for regular purchasing on the Tesla website, which means pre-owned prices may drop a little bit, says George. Over the past few months, pre-owned cybertruck prices have dropped dramatically. If someone offers George $117,000 for cybertruck, he’s taking the deal. But at one point, cybertrucks were selling for $200,000 - $250,000. “I would personally buy a cybertruck for $105,000 at this time of week, but ask me next week and it may not be $105,000 anymore,” says George. That’s how quickly the market is changing.