Find the Pony with Carol Marshall

Paul J Daly: 0:00Gone country, sorry, demonetized.Unknown: 0:09

‍

This is Auto Collabs.

Paul J Daly: 0:13

That's the least of our concerns. Michael, unbelievable. You know how much that would change my life. If we got demonetized, I would at least be excited that someone was paying attention.

Michael Cirillo: 0:28

You get that copyright claim on YouTube and you're like, when did something? Oh, somebody cares. It's like, What's that movie with Steve Martin where he's like, the new phone books here, I'm somebody, oh, jerk. That's how I feel when I get a copyright claim on

Paul J Daly: 0:43

Kyle. Have you ever seen the movie The jerk with snow Martin? Oh, my God,

Kyle Mountsier: 0:48

I feel like I have, because Steve Martin's the same character in every movie, right? Yes, but this is like,

Paul J Daly: 0:53

early Steve Martin, when he was really all in on this character. And it's like the phone book comes and he's excited. No phone books are here, and he looks at his name, and he finds that his name is, like, in there, he's like, I'm a somebody. And then it's a hard cut to like, it's like a, like, a Rando, like, shooter who is looking through the book and just picks a name at random, like, who he's gonna go try to shoot at, and it's his name. And then that's off and running. So I don't know, speaking of being, I don't know where we go from that. Let's go back to the hat. So the hat is the first new look that the more than cars ecosystem has had in forever, and it feels a little Nashville, it feels a little Texas, it feels a little human. And you can buy these. We're going to be selling them. We released them at ASOTU CON, and now we're going to be selling them online@shop.asotu.com you should have one because this is, this is cool weekend where, like, I don't know this is showroom wear, but this is weekend where it depends on your showroom. I guess

Unknown: 1:49

you know who really helped push some of those is who we're going to be talking to today. Carol Marshall from active engage. They were hanging out at the hospitality. What do we call it?

Kyle Mountsier: 2:00

Every center the hospitality

Paul J Daly: 2:02

sponsor, but they had the shirts on that were like, hospitality, how can we help you and just blend it in as those willing to serve people? You

Michael Cirillo: 2:11

know, we've, we've had her on before, and it's always an engaging conversation. You know, she's somebody that thinks deeply about a lot of different aspects of the industry, and we know, I mean, we love her because she's a good partner, and, you know, they just did a bang up job in the hospitality area of Con. So why don't we dig in? Why don't we bring her on in, and hope you guys enjoy this conversation with the Carol Marshall.

Kyle Mountsier: 2:41

All right. We're hanging out with Carol. Carol, it is so good to see you again. How's, how's life in the active engage in your world. Let's start with that. Let's get let's get into just how's life. How's life.

Carol Marshall: 2:53

Thank you first of all for inviting me. It is good to see you both again. Life is good. Life is super busy. We're growing the team, and that's always interesting and fun, and you learn new things and new people, and that's exciting for us, growing people, growing products. It's it's growth is good. So I think, fine,

Michael Cirillo: 3:20

I just gotta ask this because I'm curious, because, because I'm in the we're in the same boat growing

Kyle Mountsier: 3:24

I was, I was gonna ask the same question. So I'm glad you're asking it. Okay if

Unknown: 3:27

you find, you know, we, oftentimes, I feel like in business, we're like, you know what? Like, growing revenue is hard, and then it comes around to hiring, and you're like, I think growing a team is the most difficult thing ever. Tell us your secrets? How do you find the right people?

Carol Marshall: 3:44

Our secrets is we, we listen and we pay attention. And early, early, like years ago, I read a book hiring for attitude, and it described how Southwest Airlines hires, and it was so insightful, and it involved, yeah, hiring for attitude, and it involved asking a series of questions, and you ask it of your entire team, and then you noted how did your high performers answer versus your lower performers? And now you have an answer key to when you interview people. It also gave tips like, if people answer questions with never, always. They tend to be very dramatic people, and so you might want to stay away from that if you don't want to have a lot of workplace drama and

Michael Cirillo: 4:31

all the Italians.

Carol Marshall: 4:37

So we know sometimes they gotta say that's

Michael Cirillo: 4:42

interesting. Yeah, huh? That? No, that, that's interesting, though, because those are, there's common language, and I just find, you know, everyone's resume is a good lie. You know, it's just like a good cover letter, strong interpersonal communication skills. You're like, yeah,

Carol Marshall: 4:59

right. So now we have a hiring team, and it's cross departmental. Our HR team has trained all of these folks on how to interview, and we went through this be amazing, or go home workshop off based on the book by Shep Hyken. Be Amazing, or go home. And let me tell you, when you have an amazing team and you're looking to grow, they will smell out the ones that need to go home so quick, because now they're listening for that extra they're they're really tuned in. And so, in fact, today I just made the proclamation, I'm not hiring anyone anymore, because I'm too hopeful in my hires. You know, I'm for, oh, I think this person can get there and I can get them over that.

Kyle Mountsier: 5:53

Never hump,

Carol Marshall: 5:56

yeah, the team does great, though, the team, and I think that's, that's the combination, is okay.

Kyle Mountsier: 6:02

So, so we've got a book called hiring for attitude. Is it the book be amazing, or go home? Or is it it's a different Yeah, it's that book. Yeah, we'll put that in the show notes. Because I well, I think if we all point to especially southwest back in the day, right? I think Southwest has waned a little bit. You always got on a Southwest flight, and you were like, how did they find these amazing people to fly in steel cans all day? Right? Like

Carol Marshall: 6:29

they all had the same kind of attitude. And in that book, it explains that, you know, 99% of the people applying for pilot are ex military, and so they come in in their suits and their ties, and they put them all in a huge conference room and explain, oh, there's been some delays, and we just need you to wait. And they would make that conference room really warm. And then after 45 minutes an hour, they would come in with a box of Bermuda shorts and go, we know you guys must be warm. Feel free to grab a pair of shorts while you're waiting. And the ones who did not take shorts, they never interviewed, because no way that did not fit the persona of Southwest, of having fun and adapting and going with it.

Kyle Mountsier: 7:19

Yeah, interesting. That's unbelievable. Yeah, they

Carol Marshall: 7:22

call it the brown shorts test. Yeah, I

Michael Cirillo: 7:25

just learned something about myself. I'm like, You better not put those shorts on. You are a pilot. You're right, right? There are souls on board, right?

Carol Marshall: 7:33

But think about like you said Kyle back in the day, when you think about the things that were said on the PA system in southwest flights. Oh yeah. You're like, Whoa,

Kyle Mountsier: 7:43

yeah. But yeah, you don't, you don't just find those well. And I think you've said it is, you know you can, you can try. We all know this, right? Yeah, it's like, you've got a top salesperson performs, sells 3540 cars a month. But it's just a cancer to the entire organization and, like, that's an example of not hiring for attitude, because you potentially hired for skill, or all of a sudden they, like, grew into that skill and became a cancer because of attitude. But like, you hire for attitude. I my good friend who, I think you guys know, Patrick, a bad he always says, like, we hire happy people because happy people make happy people, right, right? Like, it's like, this residual effect. Like, if you hire happy people, there's going to be happy people in your business and your client base, all of those type of things. And you can't just, like, force happiness.

Carol Marshall: 8:34

No, you can't force it is an attitude. It's how you're it's how you're trained to think, you know, it's the the old joke about the two boys, and the one kid gets all the presents, and the other kid, the room opens up, and it's a room full of horse crap. And, you know, they come back and check on the one kid with all the kid with all the presents, he's like, I they're like, why don't you play with them? And he's like, Well, I'm afraid I'll break one, and you'll be really angry and, he's crying, right? They go back to the kid with room all the horse crap, and he's just joyfully slinging this crap left and right. And they're like, why are you so happy? And he goes, Well, all this horse crap, there's got to be a pony in here somewhere. So.

Michael Cirillo: 9:19

And that's now I'm thinking. I'm thinking, we need to the next time we hire people Kyle, we gotta put them in the boardroom. We have to crank up the heat, and then, like, at some point we come in with just like clippers, like hair clippers, and we're like, we know it must be hot, and just throw like clippers out. See who shaves their head to look like at first. We'll put, like, some fake beards on the table.

Carol Marshall: 9:44

Yeah, do something with the fake beards. I don't know that you really want people willing to go,

Kyle Mountsier: 9:55

but here's, here's what I know. And when you think about an organization like active, engage. That is that has grown and is larger, and you all just were at ASOTU CON, and we kind of, we early on, presented this, this option, and it was in our, you know, our media kit, our sales deck and all that type of stuff. But we said we wanted someone to partner with us, from a hospitality perspective, to like, greet people and be available and actually come to serve instead of just like, be served by having sales output, right, right? And you all like, it's hard to find 910, people to come that are like, I mean to be to be fair, kind of paying to work. It's like, No, we're gonna throw down because we know that if we serve well, people will look at us and go, Wow, that's a different type of company to interact with, yeah. How did that kind of come about? And then, like, the talks internally to get people ready for serving at that level.

Carol Marshall: 10:53

So when we saw what the packages that were being offered were offered, hospitality is just, I don't know it's a core part of me. I have two daughters in the hospitality industry, and I have a son training to be a pilot. I don't know if he'll put the shorts on, but so hospitality means something. It means something, and I think that's the whole thing. When you go through that be amazing, or go home book, and we put everyone through it, but you got to be ready to stand on your business and mean it. And so when we started talking to Anne Marie, and I think it said two or three people to help, you know, with registration or whatever, and I was like, I think we can do more. There's more to being hospitable when, I mean, we all go to conferences, and we understand, you know, if you're really need to find the bathroom or whatever that situation is, there's just so much more you can do. And we want to be amazing in every single thing that we do as a company, so that, yes, that means the conversations with shoppers on the dealer's websites or autotrader or wherever that is. That means too, when I pass someone in the hallway, or I see someone at a conference, you're gonna be amazing. And so when we started the conversation with you guys, you were like, well, how many people can you bring? And I said, How many do you need? And so it was a couple of weeks that you came back and and I said, yeah. So I mean, I have two people in sales, that's it too. So I tapped some people in Customer Care, marketing, strategic partnerships, and that's the team. And yes, we've been meeting. We met repeatedly to prepare ourselves to be that hospitality that will make you guys proud, because I know you all put together such a professional, polished product in everything you do, we will not be the chink in that armor. And so that's the way we've approached it, and trained and prepared for it.

Kyle Mountsier: 13:07

That's so cool, like that, like pulling that together, I think, is, is it's a it's a different way of looking at serving the industry. And I think when, when you pair that with, like, the question of, what do we build next, right? What do we build for the dealer? Next? What do we build for the consumer? Next? You're probably approaching it with us with a similar type of heart and mentality. It's not just like, Oh, someone did this. We should do the same thing. It's like, you know, you're asking the like, right question initially. So I'd love to hear like, how has that been productized? How has that been thought of in the business output of what you're doing right now? How is that transferring to the way we use serve customers, the way you serve

Carol Marshall: 13:48

Yeah, it's interesting. The what we're hearing back from our sales and our partnership teams now is the industry, the dealer body has kind of been they've been trained to believe that if you pay a company to handle your messaging, you need to watch those conversations and jump in and save them or take them over and so us coming in and trying to explain you don't need to do that with us. You're going to get better results with us. It's tough. It's it's a it's a hill to climb. Even though we're the oldest in the industry, it's just not what anyone else does, the way that we train and do quality eval, and our goal is to get that shopper sticky with that dealer and get them into the dealership. Leads are easy. We don't care about leads. We care about the quality of that connection, from the time they enter the site through to the dealership, so that the sales team in store, they have quality people to talk to that that person is going to answer your email. They're going to answer your phone call. I mean, it's hard to you. As a sales manager to get your team call these leads, call these leads, and nobody answers. And nobody answers an email because that was just a form fill or it was a not a good experience, and you've lost their trust, and they've moved on, right? And so then, yes, we're working on additional products in terms of following up on leads already in the CRM, and we'll have all those products out the second half of the year. We also have flip to text, which is, if the dealership phone line is busy, the consumer can change that to a text, so now they're getting that same human conversation right from the job to again, build that connection. It's, it's, it's tough when we're the we. I know a lot of people say a lot of things, and all I can say is, we really mean it, and that was part of why we wanted to be hospitality at ASOTU CON is like, you can feel us touches, look us in the face, and like where we're trying to back up what we're saying and be more visible in that way. So I

Michael Cirillo: 16:05

feel like speaking of people saying a lot of things. I'm interested. This is my crack at a Kyle Mountsier segway. This is not a dealership thing. This is a human thing. I want to be clear about this, because we are we are advocates. I know all of us are advocates for the dealer body here, but one thing we hear dealers say a lot is, across the board, oh, the leads stink right. The leads are awful. And I think of the impact of that on whatever follows, if the starting point is always the lead stinks, right? What does that do to morale? How they handle opportunities? How does it kill hospitality versus what you've just said? I love how you said, we will not be the chink in your armor. And I know you were directing at that, at us, but I mean, Kyle kind of drew a throughput there. That's your sentiment. I can hear it exactly right, with your client partners, yeah, not being the chink in their armor, having quality eval, making sure the customer, the shopper, experiences where it needs to be, and ensuring the quality of the connection. Yeah. What are you seeing is the impact now of a pre vetted, higher quality opportunity on the dealer's ability to provide better hospitality.

Carol Marshall: 17:18

So I, just before we started this. I heard there was a dealer that signed on with us two weeks ago who really thought they wanted to do self managed and handled the conversations themselves. And because of turnover, they they had to change plans, right? And we're like, you know what we'll do, fully manage for you. Our team can handle the conversations. Let's just go ahead and launch so. And it's a Volkswagen store, and in two weeks, we've set eight appointments, and they've sold all, all eight. So excuse me, right, right. Hold right.

Kyle Mountsier: 17:59

I was like, I was like, and they all showed up, and three of them bought, and I was like, that was going to be pretty good. I was going to be down for them. She goes. And they sold all eight. Yeah,

Carol Marshall: 18:09

all eight. And this was a dealer who was just so determined that his team was would do it, and he had a guy and it would be great, and that it does. And look, I appreciate I came from the dealership. I appreciate everything a sales person in a dealership needs to do, especially today. You kidding me? You've got all the paperwork, you've got hybrids, you've got tariffs are like, it's all full blast, so to sit and watch someone else have a chat, or to try and do that yourself. When the average volume for a dealer, you know it's going to be a lot of waiting to for something to come in. If you're one dealer, that just doesn't make sense to me. It's not it's not efficient, it's not economical, and the results are not going to be as good. So

Michael Cirillo: 19:00

what I love about it is, is this Carol I love that. You know, too often, I think in our industry, again, back to human nature, we make this a very like finger point, finger pointing type conversation. It's like, well, that must mean that dealer stinks. You know what? I mean. It's always like, that kind of thing. And, and what I love is, I don't get that sense here at all. In fact, you know what I'm hearing you say is, like, hey, like, there's so much nuance to why, potentially, an organization couldn't handle their leads, bandwidth, training, whatever it might be. You're saying, Hey, we're we're not saying we sold all these eight cars. What we're saying is we set them up at bat with the right pitch at the right speed for their organization, so that they could knock it out of the park. They still had to do their side of it, but we set them up in a way, and I think that's so important to distinguish. And maybe I'm overcompensating, but I hear that way too much. It's like, look at the problem. We solved for the dealer. It's like, Nah, but the dealer did so much work, and I love that. I'm not getting that sense, yeah? Now,

Carol Marshall: 20:06

yeah, we're we are their partner. That's it. We are not, you know, they still have a lot to do.

Kyle Mountsier: 20:15

I think I was listening to you earlier, and I almost brought this up, but now that, now it's like, eight people, eight, eight sold right with this one particular dealer? Well, one, I'm still just like, kind of reeling from that. But also you, you, you said something early on. I can't remember exactly how you said it, but it was something like, we, we are building a like. We're the communication with the customer is building trust, such that when they come to the store, when they interact with the store and and it's building trust from the store, that when that, when that person comes in contact with someone at the store level, that they trust, that it's a good connection, right? Like, like, that's quality, that's a quality person on the other side, that's right. I'm guessing you've have you read Stephen Covey Speed of Trust, I have not, okay, you got, I will. Gotta check out Stephen Covey Speed of Trust, because I think it can be, it'll just be a continuation. But when I think about like a person that has a great attitude that approaches every single day with being amazing, and understands that the Speed of Trust is a massive impact factor to every piece of a relationship. It's like, employee to employee, employee to customer, customer to to dealership, dealership back to active, engage, right? Yeah, that level of like, the increase in speed of trust increases efficiency, increases throughput, increases conversation, yeah, and you like, you wrap all the there's three books that people are going to have to read after this podcast, yeah,

Carol Marshall: 21:52

yeah, yeah. It's we are, of course, our executive team, I've been here over 16 years. Our executive team has been here over 10 years, and I have over 80 years experience just in my training team, training and quality team, of their experience focused on these types of conversations, and then the culture is one where people are vocal, and if something's not right, like they're raising their hand, Usually to me, and that's okay, because I will find the pony, and they'll be like, This is not right. This didn't come across right, and I didn't get prepped. And I'm like, okay, okay. And then we come together and we talk about it, we get it right, because ultimately we got to deliver so and it does require trust. It's like, you know, when you're first married and you have that first argument and you're like, Oh my God, he's gonna leave me or whatever. And you just come to understand when you've been together so long, like no one's leaving, we're going to communicate and we're going to get get through to the solution. So, yeah, wow.

Michael Cirillo: 22:55

Well, listen, we trust you, and we're grateful that you trust us and that you are amazing hospitality partners. Carol, thank you so much for joining us on Auto Collabs

Unknown: 23:04

today. Thank you. Thanks both.

Kyle Mountsier: 23:11

All right, here's my notes, the books. Don't forget them. They'll be in the show notes, hiring for attitude, be amazing, or go home. Oh, love that and the Speed of Trust. Stephen Covey, those three books, if you pull those three books together, you will have the essence of hospitality, trust, bringing the right team together, making sure that they're constantly encouraged to do their best. And you might just build an organization that has the staying power of like an active engage over time.

Paul J Daly: 23:45

There. You know, I often, in my kind of hiring spiel, I usually get to speak to potential hires at the end of the interview process, right? They've gone through several, several interviews, and we've determined some things. And I always say the same, stick to them say, I look at hiring in two, two ways, qualification, qualifications and fit. Right. Qualifications are, you have the skills and the aptitude to do the job. Fit is you have the attitude and the aspiration to go in the direction that we're going to and fit will derail a very qualified person faster than anything else you could be the best at what you do. So I love the focus on hiring for attitude, because you can train skills. It's very, very difficult to train I would say you can't actually train attitude. You can train some behaviors in there, but that doesn't mean you get the attitude right, and it spills out.

Michael Cirillo: 24:38

I don't know why you're like as I'm listening to you talk this through. I'm thinking about when you use the wrong size Phillips screwdriver, and it just shreds the thread and and it kind of makes me think that she brought up stuff, like I wrote down words that she was saying, like, there's there's words that you can listen for, that people. Will say that kind of give you an indication of what kind of employee they'll be, how they'll contribute or detract from the whole one of them was the word never, people that use the word never, common absolutionists, yeah, and they tend to bring drama. And I'm like, Huh, you know? And I think, How many times do we do that in our organizations where you know you might like the person, but the like of the person actually gets in the way with what she's talking about. And what you just brought up, Paul, where it's like, but it's not the right fit. We're just stripping away at a screw here that's never gonna, like, bring the whole thing together. So I thought that's

Kyle Mountsier: 25:33

a great that's a great illustration, because illustration, once you share the screw out, right, like, then you have to bring in the big tools, and you're really I feel like we've got a LinkedIn carousel just like ready to be made right there. Fam. Hey, we hope you enjoyed this conversation with Carol Marshall. I know we certainly did. Hey, thanks for hanging out with us here on Auto Collabs. We will see you next time and go get your hat.

Unknown: 25:56

Sign up for our free and fun to read daily email for a free shot of relevant news in automotive, retail media and pop culture, you can get it now@asotu.com that's asotu.com if you love this podcast, please leave us a review and share it with a friend. Thanks again for listening. We'll see you next time you welcome to Article. Lasts.

‍