A Real Live Dealer In the Studio ft. Phil Gill

‍SPEAKERS

Kyle Mountsier, Paul Daly, Phillip Gill

Paul Daly  00:32

All right, it is anything but a normal Wednesday in the office, guys all by himself, but we're gonna introduce you to a dealer Phil Gill. Welcome to the show. Phil, we're gonna ask you all kinds of questions. You just, you just wait. My favorite part about this. I don't know that we've ever done this, but Kyle doesn't even know.

Kyle Mountsier  00:53

No clue met Phil literally three and a half minutes ago and in the middle of that had a mild crisis in the homefront, which has been averted. But we're we're here. We're here, Paul. We're here. We're gonna be okay.

Paul Daly  01:09

So, this is Phil Gill, I found out your title is General Sales Manager of Tom Gill Chevrolet in Florence, Kentucky. But I think you probably do a little bit more than general sales managing the show.

Phillip Gill  01:19

Thank you. Appreciate that.

Paul Daly  01:22

So So tell us, tell us a little bit about your store and kind of your history in the store and what it is doing. We got some specific questions about how you're managing Evie transition as a Chevy dealer and in a world market. And I think some other interesting things about what you're doing with culture.

Phillip Gill  01:36

Yeah, sure. So like I said, from Tom Gill Chevrolet, and we're a single point Chevy store in the Cincinnati marketplace. But we sit on the Kentucky side of the Ohio River. So you know that that river can be an ocean at times and

Kyle Mountsier  01:51

so can also be really, really weird color that you don't even want to look at. Once it

Paul Daly  01:58

spent a lot of time in Cincinnati. A couple two, three years.

Kyle Mountsier  02:01

Couple of great grew up there. Yeah.

Phillip Gill  02:05

Oh, it's good to good to be with the fellow Cincinnati. And then yes, go bangles. Right? We can say that.

Paul Daly  02:14

So tell us about the store size. You know how long it's been in the family and give us a little groundwork and then we'll get into some specifics. Yeah, so

Phillip Gill  02:21

my dad purchased the store back in 1996. So we're a little over 25 years old in the in the Florence Kentucky market. What

Paul Daly  02:27

was he doing before that

Phillip Gill  02:29

he was he was a dealer in Columbus. Okay, so he was an Oldsmobile GMC Dealer. He opened that dealership in 89. And got the opportunity to buy the Chevy store and a growing market. So jumped on that sold sold Oldsmobile back to General Motors and good move. Yeah, we made a good move.

Paul Daly  02:50

And how long have you been part of the store?

Phillip Gill  02:52

So I've been there about 11 years full time now, of course, grew up around the entire store. So it's it's a little weird to say that but yeah, 11 years working in the business?

Paul Daly  03:01

And what is your what is what is your day to day look like?

Phillip Gill  03:05

So as you've mentioned, my technical title is General Sales Manager. Yeah. So a large part of my day is doing that, and making sure that our sales department is delivering a great experience and driving the results that we need as a store. But I get myself involved in a lot of other areas as well. So that could be cultural things that could be future business, or any other part of the dealership that needs assistance. In that moment. Yep. Yeah, it's kind of a jack of all trades, which I guess isn't necessarily unexpected for dealers, kids sometimes.

Kyle Mountsier  03:36

How did you did you like it? Was Was sales always kind of the the vibe that you went through over the last 11 years? Or have you kind of touched every part of the store at this point?

Phillip Gill  03:47

Yeah, so I I grew up. Yeah, I've worked in the BDC. I've worked in the accounting office, I've worked as a porter and lot tech. So I've done a lot of different things. I kind of found my way into the sales department. I was I was I was an accounting major by background. So I was actually working in our office and then got pushed into the use car department to start running that. So basically, an accounting department. Right. Yeah. So right, right. Yeah, it's inventory management. So started running that. And then from there, just, you know, got more and more involved throughout the store. And we, we made some changes, I became the General Sales Manager. And we've just kind of gone gone from there. So I've been in that position for about five years now.

Paul Daly  04:31

And so people have a little bit of context for the questions, the real questions start. How many how many do you sell on on a regular monthly basis? Everybody always wants to know that and you know, so they can kind of contextualize

Phillip Gill  04:41

our average volume is about 250 units that's made up of about 170 used and 80

Paul Daly  04:47

new, a very strong use car and you buy a lot of cars in Dubai center as well.

Phillip Gill  04:51

Yeah, one of our one of our things that we started during COVID time when when we knew the writing was on the wall that that inventory flow would change. We started to Trying to figure that out and getting some success there.

Paul Daly  05:02

So yeah, definitely have a little bit of one of our good friend David Long's influence in your talk tracks

Phillip Gill  05:07

pretty much full influence. Yeah. So David's been a great asset for us and has really helped us along the way. It's awesome.

Paul Daly  05:14

All right. So we were just saying yesterday that we're kind of a little fatigued talking about all the Evie transition because you look through the news and it's all this Evie stuff and surely in the news this morning, so we had lots of ESB stuff. You took a long view approach on being prepared for an Eevee transition and do a lot with education, educating your sales staff. What is your overall approach been for the last like 24 months on EVs? And where are you looking at, you know, for the next 12

Phillip Gill  05:42

Yeah, so the last 24 months has been building on successes that we started putting in place when Chevrolet started putting the bolts on our on our lot and the recognition that hey, this is a different customer and a completely different vehicle that we now have to sell. And we have to be able to approach the customers in the knowledge base that they want and be prepared for that. So over the last 24 months, it's been a lot of focus of developing evey product specialists so in our store, they have to test into that position not everybody at our dealership can sell an Eevee and that involves training for the manufacturer and involves passing our own in store test to make sure that they know what they're talking about when that cars

Paul Daly  06:24

How did you develop the in store test of that love?

Phillip Gill  06:27

So yeah, the in store test was developed from with my management team of us learning about EVs learning what General Motors really wanted the customers to know and what we thought it was important the customers to know so it's kind of a an array of different those different areas put together in one test. And if they don't pass it they don't sell them so it's he said it's

Kyle Mountsier  06:50

available for download at Tom Gill

Paul Daly  06:54

Thank you So Kyle was one that was a real early Evie train person as well, like with the new silos.

Kyle Mountsier  07:03

I was like in the first class of leaf after it came out of California in in the Nashville area like that was super early there. And so I remember that, like first couple years of having a you know, having to be a little bit ahead of the curve. And what I remember in the Nissan World, my question to you is, have you seen you said it's kind of a different type of shopper. But have you seen over the last 24 months in the store? The type of shopper interested or engaging because because I'm guessing like early adopter Evie is very, they might even know more than a lot of the product specialists or the team members. And they just like their spreadsheet it out. They know all the data, they probably know the least numbers. Have you seen that progressively change in the type of adoption across customer profiles that you're getting on the showroom?

Phillip Gill  07:52

We definitely have it's it's funny because you know, our first customers for the bolt were GE Aviation has a big presence in Cincinnati. So Right. Yeah, Kinnear's way more than our product specialists, which was embarrassing to me. They were like

Kyle Mountsier  08:06

the drag coefficient. Wing, right? Yeah,

Paul Daly  08:11

actually, they say actually a lot, actually.

Phillip Gill  08:15

They knew way more, it took them two visits to buy. It was just, it was a wild, just wildly different customer than we're used to dealing with over the last 24 months. So we've seen that that customer base really opened up, right. It's a lot of people that are considering Evie as a second vehicle in their home, because it just makes more sense than having to ice vehicles. We have a lot of people like an older generation that is really an environmental has become a pretty steady base of customer for us. And it's really interesting, because when we have the EVS on the ground, people just start asking questions that you would never think would ask questions. And it's just become way more mainstream to where customers are actually interested in what an Eevee has to offer. And it's coming from all demographics at this point in time. So we just needed to be prepared for that. And I feel like we really are,

Paul Daly  09:07

I think an interesting part of this. And what you're telling us from boots on the ground is the fact that there's this is this isn't like a super, like tech driven brand, right? It's not an Audi. It's not accurate, right? We're talking about Chevy and you're talking about Chevy customers coming in and considering EVs and asking questions about them. As you know, since you said one demographic, it's a great second vehicle. Yeah. And then another the you're saying the older demographic is very environmentally conscious, your group that are like, You know what, I think I think we might try this now. You told me earlier today that you drove a boat for two years.

Phillip Gill  09:43

I did yeah. I drove drove one for a demo from from the store. And, you know, I absolutely love to drive in an electric vehicle. Now I had the benefit of being able to plug it into the garage that I would park in. So the charging was easy, right? You're never going to think about it. I never had to think of out it which I think it was your commute like I had. So my drive at that time was about 15 minutes, it was about 10 miles down to the dealership. So pretty, pretty easy commute, mostly highway. But it got me around town and everything like that. And it was just a joy to drive. You know, you really realize how quiet EVs are when you start driving them and then you just go back to an Ice Vehicle and you're like, oh, wow, these actually do make no right. Okay,

Kyle Mountsier  10:26

okay, okay. Okay, speaking of the quiet let me have you ever intend to

Paul Daly  10:32

speak? You said start speaking

Kyle Mountsier  10:35

Have you ever intention I've never I've never done this intentionally snuck up on someone in the grocery store parking lot and just honked really good at him when when he scrolled up to

Phillip Gill  10:48

the grocery store parking lot. dealership. I got a few employees.

Kyle Mountsier  10:57

It is it's really wild the like, just there is no sound coming out of those things, both internally and externally of that vehicle. And it's it's almost you go back, you go from Evie to ice quickly. It's almost cacophonous to be in an ice vehicle, especially one that doesn't have a ton of that. So like, and just the pickup, right? You just get so used to this, like, all of the powers available it go.

Phillip Gill  11:21

It's a wild instance scenario, for sure that instant torque is crazy. And then the thing I fell in love with that gotten that really ruined me was the one pedal driving to where Oh, yeah, just being able to use the gas pedal to slow and accelerate the vehicle. And it just made driving so much more enjoyable in a lot of ways. And then

Paul Daly  11:39

all of a sudden, you're like, press the brake and going about to to battle operations. We have a couple minutes left, I want to ask you, you put a lot of time and intention in your store around company culture around developing personnel. Can you give us just a little insight on how you think dealers could approach specifically their sales department in order to help retain because your retention is amazing how to keep sales staff engaged and moving forward?

Phillip Gill  12:07

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, some of the things that we've done that is that have really helped us is making sure that there is defined career path that exists within our sales department. So your people have expectations of where they can go and what they need to do to get there. And then you're the management has to be engaged in coaching and driving, you know, in training towards those things as well. Because if people don't feel like they're growing or getting what they should be, what's the purpose of actually staying with the company. So when I became General Sales Manager, we had a big turnover problem. And one of the things that, you know, we realized early on was unless we fix retention, we're not going to fix our sales or grow our our business or have a great customer experience, because we're always training from the ground up. So, you know, from great new hire training programs, to continual training to career paths, and making sure that people have a fair pay plan, with good work balance. I mean, our people are scheduled for, you know, 40 to 45 hours a week, they're not expected to be there any more than that unless they want to be. And so they can find that balance and still get a good paycheck and and get the training to develop that they need to grow in their career. And we've seen big results from it. What's your average salesperson

Paul Daly  13:22

turn it?

Kyle Mountsier  13:24

Sorry, Kyle? Well, I think there's there's a lot of people that say like, Hey, we want great training, we want great employee retention. And they hear that and they're like, yeah, all that sounds great. But there is a, there's a time gap that I think we fail to recognize a lot. What what was, how would you attribute the time that was necessary, both like on a day to day basis, and then the time for implementation that it took to go from, you know, kind of not having great retention to needing all these new hire, onboarding, training, long term training? What was the time and scope of your team that was necessary to put all that together and implement it?

Phillip Gill  14:04

Yeah, so when we first started really focusing on it, it was probably three years before we started seeing a lot of the long term effects of that, right, you could see it going in the right direction, you know, even in the first few months of it, but it is not a short term solution. Like most things in this business, if you're doing it my view, if you're doing it right, you're seeing the effects of a decision you're making three years in, you know, three years later, it's where you see all the groundwork finally play out because it does take a lot of effort every day to make sure we're doing it right and building a good team. And that that is really a reflection of the management and their commitment to investing in the people. Getting to know other people forming those relationships and learning how we can we can better them in their careers. What's your average salesperson do every month. So right now our average salesperson is about 21 cars a month.

Paul Daly  14:58

That's how that works. crush. That's how that works.

Kyle Mountsier  15:04

Here's the mic.

Paul Daly  15:06

I gotta give you dropped these things. You had one more question, Kyle? Well,

Kyle Mountsier  15:13

yeah, my question was, it was really just a statement that, you know, when, when you go to an NAD a, or a digital dealer, or you see a webinar, or you come to a soda con, like people always say, you know, my focus this year is on training. Right? And that's not gonna cut it is the point is, if you're, if you're thinking that you're going to take a year, focus on training and get it right for your organization, you've cut two years off the process of like, getting to where it's a consistent pursuit of training, retraining, and making the hiring onboarding process such that you can create the retention levels and the sales levels that are necessary to create that type of customer lifecycle and journey. So just like that's, that's just implanted in my head is if you're going it's a year of really hard, intense training. You've cut two years off your time.

Paul Daly  16:16

There you go. Well, I don't know how else to leave you off on Wednesday. Phil, thank you so much for joining us today. It's been really great. Kyle, hold it down on that. So we'll hold it down on this side. All you out there you have some cars to sell and some some training to learn.

Kyle Mountsier  16:33

If you're still listening, we have an Easter egg, head to asotucon.com and you can purchase tickets today.

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