Dealers Share Year End Insights

Paul J Daly: 0:29

Tuesday, December 26. Everybody actually had a real honest to goodness day off yesterday. So we thought we would come back and share with you five dealers. Yes, five dealers in the conversation. We have five awesome dealers.

Kyle Mountsier: 0:45

Really awesome people at dealers. I mean, no need to repeat when you'll get to meet him in a second if you didn't meet him last week of the year and extravaganza. So

Paul J Daly: 0:54

last Yeah, last week, we did have the urine extravaganza, which has been live streaming over the weekend over the long weekend. And it's still available. Probably the best place. I mean, it's on our LinkedIn. But the best place to see it is to go to our YouTube channel, which is a so tube ASOTU dot B, E. And you'll see a ton of content there that you probably didn't know existed, but it does. But toward the very top, you'll see the year and extravaganza It's our third annual show we put together brought in I heard over 100 voices from the industry.

Kyle Mountsier: 1:26

Yes, that's like people that were in the show not watching the show in the show. Yeah, right.

Paul J Daly: 1:31

Right. It's crazy. That's our strategy to have as many people as we can in the show, just so we can get the head count up. No, there were 100 people and we had this one conversation we're going to share with you today with five dealers or general managers, right like some dealers, some Jim's talking about some of the different things in the industry strategies. We ask Erica Tiffany wells what it's like becoming a GM what she didn't know what she wish she knew. Going into it. So we have before we

Kyle Mountsier: 1:58

get to it before we get to I just have to note, Paul, I think we've the last two years that we've been doing this like post Christmas podcasting casting thing. I think I've reminded you of this but like, I have to note for all of the people that have not been in dealerships in a long time not spent a lot of time in dealerships or anything like that. Like if you think Saturday's are busy or you think like August Saturday August 8 is exciting in the car business. You've never walked in on the 26th and gotten the the like level of like riled up energy within you about what's about to happen over the next five days. Forget

Paul J Daly: 2:42

end of month versus end of month, end of quarter end of year. It's like tennis, this is game set, match point match

Kyle Mountsier: 2:49

like it is just unhinge so for all of you out there that are walking into a great point. I am like I am just rooting for you pumped for you, like get game face on have a whole ton of fun. But yeah, we do want to share this conversation with you. But I had to bring that

Paul J Daly: 3:05

up. It's so good. No, no closing it 123 Every once in a while I think this conversation will contribute to that. Absolutely. Because definitely everyone that's in this segment is 1,000% in the mode that you just described right now, all day. So we have Fabiola, Maya's Mathis, Erica Tiffany wells, Ed Roberts, Mickey Anderson and Michael Lee, all people that we've introduced you to and content throughout the year, all people that I want to sit down and have dinner with in this next year. And we really think you'll enjoy this conversation we had with them the year of extravaganza, what better way to start the year and extravaganza than by hearing from the driving force behind our industry, the auto dealer. So please welcome to the show some new and familiar faces. And Roberts, Michael Lee, Erica Tiffany wells, Mickey Anderson and Fabula Mathis.

Kyle Mountsier: 3:55

You know, we want to look a little bit back of the year that was and you know, there's been a lot of conversation in dealers and it feels like there's been just a massive up and down. One of the recent conversations that we've got to have is Mickey with you particularly around what's going on in the Evie space, which is impacting so many dealers in in unique and different ways, but also similar ways. Mickey give us a little bit of a recap on exactly the people that you've brought together to have a conversation with political parties about how EVs are impacting dealers and consumers alike. Yeah, well, thanks

Mickey Anderson: 4:33

Happy Holidays and thanks for inviting me. You know, in 2023 we saw the probably the greatest influx of DVDs in the history of the industry and I will tell you we opened up the year with with tremendous enthusiasm. Most of us had some some waitlist or a lot of great products. And, and we saw a lot of enthusiasm but as the year wore on, we saw those wait lists go away we saw Supply come up and demand come down. And certainly as you get into the back end of the summer and into the fall, we started to see large inventories and very high days of class and really expensive EVs listening to our customers, we heard them say we love the technology, we want to do our part to help with the environment. But we can't afford these cars, we can't charge these cars, we can't use these cars. And we're not ready for a full electric vehicle. So that was kind of the backdrop, had a chance to talk to many dealer peers across the country. And in a matter of literally, a week or so we had 4000 dealers signed on to a letter to the president, just letting them know, what we're hearing from our customers.

Kyle Mountsier: 5:41

Yeah, that's awesome. You know, consumers are always at the at the center of a lot of our conversations. And, you know, Ed, you are consistently an advocate for giving an incredible consumer experience, the tart starts with a great employee experience. How have you all been approaching in this last year and looking forward to approaching particularly the consumer experience? What are some of the things that you're doing that are that are maybe setting the stage for a great consumer engagement and relationship?

Ed Roberts: 6:12

Well, it's like you said, it starts with employee engagement, and then it carries out. But in everything that we do, we want our over people to look through the customer lens, don't do what's convenient for us inside the dealership, follow it through, play it all the way out with that tape all the way forward, and how does it work for the customer. And that's what we need to work backwards from. And if we do that, and then enhance it internally, then the employee experience goes up. And customer experience continues to climb. And when you do that, in a growing environment, because easy to lose track of some of those things, when you're growing, it's much easier to hang on to that as you can try it in a bit. But our business is constantly growing. And to continue to do that. It takes intentionality to continue to push that through every one of our department leaders to do that.

Kyle Mountsier: 6:58

You real quick, you've been intentionally growing your mobile service department. And I've seen a lot of commitment to that, which is a commitment internally, but also externally talk a little bit about how that's gone. And what what the roadmap for that in the future looks like?

Ed Roberts: 7:13

Well, you most people will hear it first here, we are going to blow up remote services and 2020. For the sole you guys have seen it. But we have hired a remote services director. So name that you guys are familiar with and as Jeremy Stephens, hey, he had left his automotive group that he was at and came down to be a part of this ride. And customers have told us for decades that they don't want to go through the process that we forced them to. So we will meet them on their terms and go out, meet them in field and take care of them. And if we can't do it, and Phil will do pickup delivery, or we'll send a roll back for him. But we want to enhance the ownership experience, rather than just focus on the buyer focus on bias experience.

Paul J Daly: 7:52

That's amazing. We can't hear to wait to hear more about that. We hear it here. First a go. Erica, I want to I want to shift the conversation up to you now firmly in the GM seat. Congratulations again, I know that's been something you've been you've been talking about for years, it was amazing to watch that materialize in real time. Now being in the GMC, what is it that you've realized that no amount of training or preparation could have prepared before? Wow,

Erikka Tiffani Wells: 8:20

watching and seeing how the departments go together? You know, I think until you get to the general manager position, you don't really understand the delicate balance of all of the departments and how they work together, you start to watch the nuances where one little thing off in this department is going to throw a domino effect somewhere else, you know, the relationships with your people, I went from managing 30 people on the front end as a GSM to 80 people, including technicians, and service advisors and lab techs and all those relationships together. And as you build a relationship with those people and start investing into the emotional equity, they get your phone number they want to come in your office, they want to talk about their pay plans, their personal life. And you have to figure out how to balance that you know, to do what's best for the company and build those personal relationships. But also realizing that every single day you're responsible for all of these families, you're responsible for a budget, you're responsible for banks, and it is a lot and I'm enjoying it. But I'm also drinking from the water faucet. As I like get what I've asked for right?

Kyle Mountsier: 9:18

Yes, I see everybody on the screen is like nodding something like this.

Paul J Daly: 9:25

Erica, what is one piece of advice you would give a lot of people in the industry are on the hunt. General Manager is kind of one of the positions at the end of the rainbow if it's not being an owner. What would you say that to the folks that see general manager in their in their sights in the next year or two? What what do you wish you were paying a little more attention to

Erikka Tiffani Wells: 9:44

service? You know, service is crucial. And I think a lot of general managers don't actually learn service until they get inside the job. Service is a big part a large part of the entire focus of the dealership and when you understand how influential it is Is to that to that balance I was telling you about you learn to appreciate a little bit differently. Our sales and service departments don't work well together, our parts and service departments don't often work well together. And when you can figure out a way to guide all those departments together with a mutual respect, you start to get the lift and the buy in and the confidence and the leadership to get each department to understand how critical it is to the point that we've even bonus departments to work together to have common goals. Because when the dealerships goals are all aligned, and all your people are backing every single one of them, then they understand instead of pointing fingers at other departments that let's work well together. So we've created these monthly, or these daily huddles where we make every department manager meet for 20 minutes every day. And we talk about how well those departments should work together any issues and concerns. So there's never any of that bubbling over volcano in the back, that they're coming together every single day to address the issues and realizing how well their departments have to work together for the success of the store.

Paul J Daly: 10:52

I mean, I've seen Ed Roberts smile a lot like if Edie is awake, he's smiling, but I don't know that I've ever seen him smile bigger than I did while you're talking about service department focusing on it and getting all the departments. Fabulous over here. I

Kyle Mountsier: 11:06

think she's about to nod her head she's like at a rock concert. Because it sounds like you're experiencing so much of this. And this is the stuff you know, from it. from an industry perspective, a lot of the conversation gets pointed at some of the macro trends and some of the big things that are happening in our industry. But the reality is the ground game is played in the dealership every single day. What's the ground game for you look like? Right now, Fabiola? And what are the what are the biggest projects that you're looking to tackle here as we go into 2024?

Fabiola Mathis: 11:34

Well, the biggest things that I'm just tackling right now is just all new leadership. This dealership needed somebody just spearheaded and actually put it in the right direction. We weren't putting our customers first we were putting ourselves first. And through the COVID times, you know, you can do the markets, you can have the inventory, you can have that list of customers that was waiting for you. And now you actually have to teach these new guys to actually sell a car and not be an order taker. So that's been a huge thing that we've been working on. I've actually prefer to hire new people. I've never been in the industry before because it's so much easier to program somebody than to deprogram them from that time of just being an order taker. So from the sales side, that's a big thing that's going on here, new sales managers, learning how to do their jobs effectively, Hey, you are great at being a salesperson, but can you believe the people that were your comrades, and then just like Eric was talking about service, people forget that service is the reason why we retain our customers, not only with our dealership, but also with our brand. A lot of people forget that that brand effectiveness, most of us have our competitors right next door at the BMW store, Cadillac, Lexus, Audi, and they're great manufacturers. But with Mercedes Benz, I chose this store because I believe Mercedes Benz has the best product. But we also have to retain our customers. And a big part of that is retaining them in service right now. So making sure that we're doing everything from start to finish, I'm very process oriented and very detail oriented. So if you put together a process, you can't get it wrong. So it's it's a big thing about if you do it over and over and over, you build that confidence within your salespeople, your service people, that they can't fail themselves, because they've done it the same way over and over. You

Kyle Mountsier: 13:21

know, I've read you have something I do. I mean, but we always, always, I was gonna say, you know, Michael has been, you know, you've you've recently become a dealer in the, in the, during COVID. Right. And, you know, as Fabula was talking about leadership, I want to recognize that leadership in a dealership is not just about who you're caring for internally, but also caring for the community externally, and you've taken a unique approach, and how your dealerships care for the community. Can you talk a little bit about how balancing leadership inside the dealership and outside of the dealership is important to the success of your stores? Yes. Oh, sorry. That was for Michael, for Michael. about that one. I

Michael Lee: 14:05

will take any advice that you have for me on that in the future as well. Fabulous, because I can always take additional advice. Other how other people do it. But, you know, one thing that we did this year is we partner with nonprofits, you know, through through the past and this year, we decided, you know, why can't we do it every month, right? Instead of just doing special events. We did it. So we did it every month and we took a vote as we talked about in our previous episode, the live recording. We started with asking our salespeople, hey, you know, would you want to participate in donating to a nonprofit? You know, every month we pack $50 per car that we sell, and the salesman of the month gets to pick whatever charity that they get involved with. Now, I told you this before we took we wanted them to be involved. So we took it up one level this year after the Christmas party last week. Our GM our sales manager and the team got together said hey listen And we're gonna also volunteer as a team, once a quarter to one of those nonprofits that we do. So whether it's one hour, two hours, four hours, but it's going to be one Sunday, every quarter, the whole entire team gets together. And we're gonna go build a house or put a roof on or you know, handout food or whatever the case might be. Now, hopefully, they have a proper guidance for building a house because I don't know how

Kyle Mountsier: 15:30

would you say that food will be good?

Michael Lee: 15:33

We're gonna have a little, you know, disclaimer. Whatever, we know, there's no no warranties behind it. You know, we need to fix

Paul J Daly: 15:40

stops people and on this one. Oh, well, thank you so much. I mean, this is we're going to do this again. And we're probably going to organize some kind of deal in my dream state where we all get to sit around the table and share these stories. We're going to do more, thank you so much. Unfortunately, we're out of time for today. You all are really the reason that the auto industry is the greatest industry in the country and and in the world is because of your level of care concern. And that's no good without some operational excellence, because we need to be profitable. So thank you for being an example to all of us and sharing some of your time with us today.

Kyle Mountsier: 16:18

Paul, what a segment I'm telling you what, that it got me fired up at the end of it. We said to all of them off camera, we're like, can we just have you guys have dinner? And we'll just kind of like let you talk for an hour. It's

Paul J Daly: 16:31

gonna happen. Hey, I'm dead. Serious. We need to get every single one of them out to a soda calm. I think we will. And it's a great time to mention. Did you know that a soda con is already on the calendar next year on the calendar. It is I'm not good with dates, but I can tell you it's in May 14th through

Kyle Mountsier: 16:48

17th and you can go to ASOTU CON right now and already start finding out more info about it. We're gonna be releasing speakers and content and early bird tickets and all the tickets here over the next month. So stay tuned on that.

Paul J Daly: 17:01

All right, well, I get a treat the music I got so excited. I forgot the trigger music you have the last day or the last week of the last month of the entire year to go out there and sell so we're gonna bump the music a little bit. Just get your game face on. It's time to close it out strong