Brunell on New Car Acquisition, Kilway on Cost Per Sale, Kaulback on Subaru | Daily Dealer Live

hey everybody welcome back to another episode of the daily dealer lot

I'm your host Sam Darkin and thanks for choosing to be here on this Wednesday the 18th of February and today

We've got a heck of a show for you

We've got a GSM who beat OEM objectives by a hundred and fourteen percent by building an alternate

Allocation network. What does that mean? Well, you're about to find out a well

We also have a digital VP measure measuring deflected sales most dealers don't even know they're losing plus we head back to Subaru in

Canada and we'll throw in a little NAD a

For good measure even though it was a couple weeks ago seems like it was just yesterday

Many of us are still recovering if you think 2026 is about waiting for better margins. It's not it's about control

It's about discipline. It's about ownership and today's owner operators will show that they'll reveal their formula

But before we go to them today's in auto industry headlines

First up today in breaking news

Stilandus is tightening its dealership ownership rules effective January 6th

By the way interesting or mid-February dealers can now acquire only one

CDJR store within a rolling 12 month period

This according to a dealer memo sent to CDG news the broader limits on ownership and trade zones remain in place

But this seems to be a clear move to slow consolidation and keep the dealer network more balanced

It's a developing story. We just got it today

We'll share more details with you as they become available

But we'll probably talk with a few of our guests today about that news piece. Many of us may guess what's behind it

We'd love to know your thoughts. We're streaming across all CDG social media platforms post your comments in today

We'll bring them into the show. Obviously, they always enrich and net next up today

Ford CEO Jim Farley in the news has reportedly been in discussions with Trump

administration officials about potential frameworks that could allow get this

Chinese automakers into the US market

Fascinating to me Trump said it at the in Detroit several weeks ago

And you see the market slowly shifting in that direction

Back to the news the idea being floated would require

Chinese brands to build vehicles in the US with an American partner holding a controlling stake and sharing in the profits and

technology

Farley hasn't publicly pushed for the model

But he's been blunt about one thing the US is in a global competition with China and ignoring that reality

He says isn't an option Chinese automakers are winning on cost structure

Speed software to find vehicles and Ford is already reportedly exploring text sharing arrangements overseas

Including talks with Geely in Europe consumers are paying attention to recent survey data shows awareness of Chinese brands is climbing

Obviously as US consumers travel abroad. They see them

I saw in Mexico more than half of respondents say they'd consider buying one and at the same time

Privacy and national security concerns remain high, especially around connected car data. Well, we know where that went with

What was it the social media platform tiktok? It's still here

So the real question back to the news isn't if Chinese brands eventually will enter the US market

It's how and when that entry will happen and we've

We've we've pulled that thread. We've talked about this time and time again on the show

I'm excited to have Michael Spiegel up here in the next couple of weeks. He actually toured BYD in China

Love to get his take on the technology and what waits awaits the automotive marketplace in the United States from a competitive

standpoint is China inches or seemingly inches closer to entering this

Marketplace next up today according to a new first quarter report from recurrent used EV sales are up

35% year-over-year with December alone up more than 10% both month over month and year-over-year

The reason is simple value under

$20,000 the average used EV is about two years newer and has roughly

40,000 fewer miles than a comparable gas car and more than half of used EV inventories priced under

30,000 bucks with nearly 40% under 25 grand in a market where sub 20k gas cars are getting harder to find

That age and mileage mix is turning heads dealers say customers are cross-shopping

late model EVs against older ice vehicles at the same price and in many cases the EV

They say feels like more car for the money

Tesla still sets the tone making up about 30% of used EV

Inventory model threes are averaging around

$27,000 model wise in the low 30s and that pricing tends to anchor the rest of the segment

Including the ID for the Aria and Mustang Mach-E

Bottom line here a wave of late model off lease supply combined with cheaper longer-lasting

LFP battery tech could give dealers a much needed

affordability lever in a used market where

Traditional inventory remains tight and my own prediction aside

It's going to be that demand for less surprise vehicles

It is going to boy up that used EV lease return market and it's going to make EVs competitive in a market where

Many have asked post government support subsidy and and whatnot. Does it fall off a cliff?

I think not back to the news auto credit access basically held flat in january cox automotives dealer track index came in at

100 that's unchanged from december and it's the strongest reading since late 22 and up nearly 5%

From a year ago

But underneath that steady headline the story gets more complicated

Approval rates slipped to 71.8% month over month even a subprime share rose to 15 7

And lenders pushed deeper into longer terms to keep deals moving

It's the affordability crisis that is automotive with consumers today rates are still climbing the average contact rate

Moved up to 10.9%

Yield spreads widened and more buyers are stretching past 72 months at the same time negative equity jumped to 56.3% of loans

That's more than half of customers rolling something in down payments ticked up slightly month over month

But they're still lighter than a year ago and with more borrowers upside down structuring clean deals is getting tough

Or even if lenders are technically quote open for business bottom line

Well, there's more lender oxygen in the room

But the math is tighter and as payments rise and equity gets thinner dealers who control structure early term cash down

Vehicle choice lender routing. Well, they're going to separate themselves from stores that wait until the box

Wait until the box to finish a broken deal and that's a wrap on today's industry headlines

I do think that you know we uh at nada talking about that

I spoke at the afsa conference affordability is a key issue in automotive today and in finance

I think we've got we've got more of an obligation to the consumer and

To the store than ever before to help bring that conversation up earlier

To help better place a customer in a vehicle that's affordable

But then also match that customer so that the trade cycle shortens

We don't want customers in a hundred plus month old loans. That's not a win for everyone

Um

Somebody said good job for the work. I'm not going to even try the the the pronunciation there and that for some reason

It's not showing up on my social media dashboard

So note to the producers hook me up

But post your comment into the uh into the feed

We love to bring it into the show and we're going to actually jump right into our first guest today coming up first

Richard Brunel general sales manager at Toyota of Bellingham. Welcome to the show

Welcome welcome welcome aboard. It's good to have you here. So awesome to be here. Hey, uh, so for our audience

Daily dealer live listening audience that may not know you uh, tell me tell our audience a little bit about you

Where you are and and who you work with

Sure. Um, my name is Richard Brunel. I'm general sales manager for Bellingham, Toyota

Mercedes Benz and sprinter uh here in beautiful Bellingham, Washington

um, I've been at this store for 14 years

uh

Proving that you could stay in one place and find a home and I've done that here. Um, I uh

Proudly serve as general sales manager on both ends, but uh, we're about to open doors on a brand new Mercedes

Building next door here. Uh, it's about done about six weeks out from opening that store and

passing that baton on and

Getting excited for that team to go over there and make a make a huge impact in our community and

And I'll stay here at the Toyota side and try to make a bigger impact

Because you know, we are sister stores, but I'm sure we'll be competitive

So back up just a minute. I think some people listening to the show today are astonished a dual point

Toyota Mercedes Benz store. How did that happen? How long has it gone on for and give us a sense of the volume that you sell

Currently out of that single point location new and used combined

Sure. Um, it's it's been a community dealership. The wilson family had wilson motors in our community for over 60 years

Uh, I started with mr. Wilson. He's a wonderful man still doing his thing

Looks the same as when he left, uh, you know, almost 11 years ago and

And uh, we've we've passed the baton to a different owner, but we've kept the culture the same

The bend side of business for our small little store does really well

We sell anywhere between 15 and 20 on the new side on the bends business and then on sprinter

We uh have been making an incredible impact with some new leadership

On the sprinter side of business and uh, we've been facilitating anywhere from

You know 10 new sprinter deals and anywhere from, you know, 10 to 15 use sprinter deals depending on on the month

So, uh, sprinter business mercedes business is good. It seems like it's picking back up

Uh, obviously there's some, uh ups and downs with bends last few years, but

The the the feeling is that everything's on an upward trajectory and especially at the new store

We're really excited about the opportunity and I think it's going to provide a lot for our community

That's awesome. And what do you what?

Tell me what you said on the Toyota side. How many units uh, Toyota?

We've always been a pretty even store. Um, we we vary anywhere between 80 and 125 new Toyota's month

And okay, we're between the same unused 80 and 125 used. Um, okay

the store

Yeah, so you get props from online paul solzman says bellingham is beautiful their store has a stellar reputation. So

There's a fan of somebody that knows you so so so you will uh, you will take the helm or you will

Transition into the Toyota store. You've got a great new GM there. We're going to talk about that in just a minute

We want to kind of pull the thread on something that you mentioned in your intake

You exceeded your I think it was your toy to objective 114 percent in january and you did it in a very

Unconventional way tell our audience a little bit

How are you getting toyotas in a marketplace where it's so tough to get additional toy to inventory?

There's not a toy to dealer in the entire united states that would say don't give me an extra

Allocation right everybody wants more units, which is smart white Toyota

Yeah, or two or three allocations. We'll take as many as we can get because they sell. Uh, that's the beauty of the brand, right? And uh

No, I I would love to take credit and say this is a one pony show, but um, truly this was uh, uh, the effort of uh, at the at the beginning

It was you know trade relationships and maintaining those I came from domestics that had adversarial relationships with other dealers and

Because we built a book of good trade relationships with other dealers. We're able to make those calls

It's still tough. Nobody wants to give them up

But you know that we look for the inventory that was sitting on the lot the dealers

were not moving and

My new car manager Devin DeValio here at the store

Did an incredible job

Using those relationships to leverage the inventory and get us some extra cars

So I think we we pulled an extra 14 units, uh, which allowed us to really you know

It made the difference between us

hitting objective let alone going over it

With the inventory shortages that exist

So when you talk about new inventory a new unit in the Toyota world is money, right? Because that's something you can you can retail

What do most dealers make them?

You know, how do most dealers make a mistake as it relates to sharing inventory or trading inventory?

You're able to call up a dealer and say hey, we need this vehicle and you get it

Not everybody's willing to do that either make them make the call or uh, or share that inventory

Why are you willing to make that call and how are you willing? How are you able to get

Dealers to share inventory in 2026?

bribery um a lot of a lot of a lot of goodies during christmas

me and dev this year and the year prior

The year before that I did it myself

We go to Costco and clear them out on their chocolate baskets and go store to store within you know within reason

We start down on Olympia, which is about 150 miles away and then work our way back up

And we stop it as many of these stores that we have relationships with as possible to let them know that we

value those relationships because you know the

Dealer partnerships are what allow us to to accommodate our customer and at the end of the day if we're treating each other well

We're able to accommodate more customers

so

I gotta tell you I've I've been in the business for over 30 years and I've never heard of a dealer taking

Easter baskets to a

Competing dealer. What made you think that was a good idea and and what's the reaction you get when you walk through the front door?

You know the the first year

Everybody thought we were coming into like we're a vendor

We're coming into solicit business or something. They didn't really understand what was going on like there's some angle being nice

But there isn't um, it's christmas time. No better time to do something like that in my opinion and

You know quite frankly that the relationships are different. Um with Toyota this this brand

Walks to beat up a different drum and so when we

show up at other stores

A little bit of surprise second year very welcoming this year was incredible. We talked to people. We haven't met

Talked to some gms that were like covering the desk while you know their their guy was gone and we got to have some interaction and

You know start some relationships with other people outside the the the folks that we you know deal with day in and day out

But I think I think that uh, you know, we're we're not alone in this thing

This is a regional thing the portland region the dealers the other sales managers like myself

They all get along really well and it is unique and and we don't take it for granted whatsoever

So actually this is a good transition into cdg circles. You're a member of cdg circles. You have been for a while. You're active in that

You know you you're giving with information and you also learn as you listen

What is it about automotive in 2026 where we're better sharing?

than uh competing to just you know

Run people under the

Bridge or whatever, you know, I mean, yeah, we're better. We're better learning from each other than we are competing to each other's disadvantage

Yeah, my my background is hospitality. I was in restaurant business before I ever got in the car business

I've been the car business over 20 years

But I was without backstake house for six years and my team gets tired of me here

Hear me talk about it, but I learned a level of hospitality with that company that is kind of

unmatched and you know from opening doors to

Getting eye level with customers cadence and timing without we communicate. I think I was just very lucky and

You know the the store

wasn't really providing me with or stimulating me enough

To to to grow

Organically so I saw it out, you know extra and cdg circles ended up being that for me. It's been incredibly valuable

I've been very thankful for the resources that are within that

That that that chat room. There's multiple of them, but you know, there's there's so much content. It's almost

It's almost overwhelming to be honest

But I look at the stuff that works that others are doing and I try to implement it. That's you know

in true Toyota fashion, that's how we conduct business and

There's a lot of good stuff happening in there. So I'm just thankful to have access to it

I'm thankful that I've created some relationships out of it and it's pretty cool to watch people grow

So, you know, it's interesting to your point. Sometimes it can be a lot and sometimes you got to kind of you got to kind of

You watch and then you kind of jump in when it makes sense and engage

But I'm always continually learning much much

I interview people on this show today and and obviously what happens in circles stays in circles

So we're not going to like say who and what and all that

But one of the circles I'm in there's an incredible conversation going on right now

An an employee at a dealership passed away

And and and there was a very authentic heartfelt

Actually, it was a family member of the employee

About how do you support an employee in death?

And there was actually there are people in that group that are saying, hey, you know what?

I had a son or a daughter die dealer didn't do anything to help me

And it was devastating tough for me to recover from here's what I would do

It's not a hey, this is the answer. It's how do we do better for our employees?

How do we do better for our customer and then in the in that circle of conversation?

There was just some incredible takeaways and one of them I came up with is an automotive word our best we care about others

And you know what you can't solve

someone passing by paying money

But but people gathering and and making gestures like money or days off

There was an idea where some employees could actually contribute days off

That actually means so much to the employee. That's that's that's that's suffering from that loss

That's what I love about circles. I can just sit and watch it and and and I learn and I get takeaways

I don't know if you have a thought on that or not. Yeah, I uh, I had a tough time with that thread this morning

as a father of three and you know as a

A

Practicing good human being

Those are always tough really tough things to to to understand and to cope with and

Those those families are in my thoughts today

I don't you know, I don't have anything to share on it. It's just incredible that we have a resource like that and people

You know are comfortable enough sharing with others. What's going on something so personal

um, it's really uh touching and

To start our day, it was a heck of a way to start the day, you know

Yeah, yeah, it reminds you the humanity that exists in automotive and I think it is unusual compared to other industries

All right, just quick pivot away from that not to go too fast

But I want to cover two quick topics before we let you go today. Um, so you are a gsm

Are are you on the new car use car side or how do you break that down in your?

I operate on both. Um, okay, uh, you know

Gsm I I don't even I don't wear a manager title. This says customer service on it

That's what we're ultimately here to provide but I I've I've had a lot of experience at this store

And and so they I leverage that as much as I can to help the other managers

But I serve as their their their direct supervisor

Um, I have a general manager above me his name is Dmitry Mordekoff. Um, and I'm uh, uh, very fortunate to have his leadership at the store

It's made a big impact. He's relatively new

So I I want to just have you share one or two takeaways. We've talked a lot on this show

What's the toughest job in automotive to hire for people used to say technicians?

That's solved for it's been said on the show many times with the right pay plan

The general manager the gsm is some of the toughest jobs because you wear so many hats

You paid your new gm accolades saying hey, he came in with energy and he changed some systems that that drove some accountability

Give us one or two super hardcore takeaways that changed

The organization inside the store and resulted in higher performance as a result of that gm shift

What has he brought to the table? Yeah, I think it's a

Double way. I mean we we have a vice president. That's very uh active named, uh, Warren Smith and Warren's been very very good about

Injecting his wisdom over the last couple years

In his experience and when he introduced us to Dmitry, um, you know, we're it wasn't like

We're underperforming or the store wasn't doing well

but the energy was different and uh, Dmitry, uh, kind of has a

history of going in and and and and creating that energy and and he he did exactly that he came in and

You know instituted some policies that made a big difference from

You know giving cells people the availability to go out with the auto and scan a car and walk around it and and and actually

Take ownership of that process a little bit more before we were

You know taking it upon ourselves the sales managers to go out and do those things and and and it this was a miss in our process

That that he plugged in really quickly that made a big impact and he's also

Pretty genius with used cars, uh, which is so valuable as you can imagine. So his uh, he's a true car guy. I'm a I'm a people guy

Dmitry loves cars. He's into him. He finds the right one sources them

And provides us with them and and they move quick and so that's made a

A big difference when people are patting their pockets

They can go out and get in front of a customer a little bit differently and I and I feel like he's helping everybody here do that

So we're a big team. There's a lot of us involved in this

But the leadership starting with him has been pretty incredible

Well, Richard Bernal general sales manager Toyota Bellingham currently

Toyota and Mercedes-Benz. We wish you luck is you go through this transition in the coming months. We're excited to hear kind of

how that goes

And actually we got you know one last question

Maybe just briefly 20 second response on this yoga cars comes in with a great question

What's your experience with Toyota's smart path dr tool digital retailing tool? Yeah, that's a great question

I'm excited about that. Actually. I share that on circles

Because it's a part of who we are here. We started with smart path right away

So we're an early adopter

We'll entrench ourselves with most of smart path products because they serve the customer which is

basically the best news about it. Um, it's uh

It's a way that a customer could buy a car from home

They don't have to basically come into the dealership. They can go through the whole process

They could pick their payment lease purchase cash

The vehicle

The credits pushed everything in and we work those deals through that system here because our customer experience is better

The the sales person stays with the customer. There's no back and forth. We work the deal through

Basically a chat and in the in the web based system. So smart paths brilliance toy to introduce it. So of course, it's brilliant

Um, but it uh, it really moves the needle on how we work with our guests

And I do believe it provides them a better experience

Is this a program program they're rolling out right now? Is it something that's been out for

Smart pass been out for a couple years with the toyota team and they're they're rolling it with service

They're rolling it with track with our rental fleet. It's just uh, I mean it is really a great interface

And it allows us to not only like keep track of what we're doing with the customers

But integrate them into the toyota world and then it's just the big circle of retention

So it uh, it does a lot for us and we're proud to adopt her of it

And if anybody else would like to know about it message me anytime

I'm happy to go over it. Well richard brunel gsm toyota bellingham. Thanks for being on the show today and sharing your perspectives. Thank you

You know, I love the idea of of you know, it's not it's not my allocation

That's the limiting factor on what we can sell

It's hey, I'm going to go out and create relationships with dealers around me

And then as we need different types of inventory, we're going to find a way working together to to win and deliver our best to the customer

Um, not everybody's willing to do that. Not everybody's willing to trade those inventory units and props to them

In bellingham for creating a great relationship with other dealers enough in order to do that. That is definitely unusual

All right, let's talk stream companies

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You've got the qr code up on the screen. You can scan that to learn more or you can go into the show notes in today's

podcast once it's uploaded

props to stream companies for supporting today's comment

Content including that great conversation with richard just now as it relates to going out and getting inventory

And then you know what? It's not every day a gsm says. Hey, we brought a new gm on board

Learned a ton from him and here's three or two

Specific things that we do better today as a result and he is doing that next up today on daily dealer live

Let's turn to vp of digital marketing ops kasa automotive group jared killway jared. Welcome to the show

Sam good to see you again

You know, it's been a while when were you last on i feel like it's been four or five months something like that five six

Somewhere in that ballpark

Six seven, you know

All right, very good. It all blends together. Yeah, yeah, it all blends

You know, let's start let's start with uh nada. So it was only one a week and a half something like that ago

Uh, it was a big nada. Give me

Something you took away from nada or your thoughts perspectives on nada 2026 las vegas

well

I think they did a great show this year and uh solidify the reason of needing to keep it in in vegas because

The turnout I think

On the vendor side the oem side all the way around really showed up this year

Yeah, I know last year we battled the ice storms in new orleans, but

You know nadia was a great time this year

um, you know big takeaways is just the evolution of the tech that's out there

and really what ai is doing

but also just

What is out there to help us as dealers to be more effective and efficient in our day-to-day operations

Do you think dealers walked away from nada with a better game plan as it relates to ai tech and some of the new developments or

Where some dealers kind of frustrated just going there seeing all the different offerings and not really having a clear path

What's your take and what's your experience your own experience?

Yeah, I think it's a little bit of both. I mean it is overwhelming everybody's thrown around

You know ai is an instance, but it's as a dealer. It's trying to determine. What are you going to utilize this for?

What is this going to solve? Is it a human capital issue?

Is it a communication issue?

Is it somebody just backstop and make sure all every phone call is getting answered to take care of your customers?

You know, what are you trying to solve with this? So I think everybody

Including the vendors were a little overwhelmed with all the different ai that's coming down market, but also

the existing companies that were newer two or three years ago

Have they evolved and caught up to the new companies coming out or is it

People coming out of the bell

That have a leg up on everybody else. That's already existing in the market. Yeah. Yeah

So last time you were on daily deal alive. Let's let's talk that technology. Let's talk that evolution a little bit

You talked about a private gpt

Basically a private ai that you were creating in-house there at the casa auto group your vp of your footprint is

New mexico area if I remember right

west texas

El Paso, new mexico, arizona

Very good. And your goal in creating this this private ai that secured data

You wanted to give the gms a tool where they could query dealership data

Um, what's the state of that? It's been september. That's when you were on last

So it's many months later. What how's it going? Uh, and what learnings are you taking away?

Well, I've learned what um, the existing companies that have been doing ai for a while or finding now

It's changing faster than ever before

um, and it's not just a

Speed of the evolution of ai, but it's also the technology and integrations, you know, big thing that i've

uncovered is

Do I even need the gms to go query it now?

And the answer is no

With the utilization of a gen tick ai. I can literally have an agent go and pull

commonality based upon each gms

Uh, you know historical so for yourself. Wait, wait, wait. What does that mean?

So so so it's interesting in in in our world

I have a question and then I can go get a report that answers that question

What you basically said is you don't need a person to have that question in order for that

How so if I don't have that question as a gm, how do you get how do you get that report?

Because it can learn from your initial queries. So the

gpt is actually learning on your behavior

And rather than you over time having to continue to log in and ask questions

You can literally get a text message notification or

In the gpt notification. Hey, you've pulled this report previously

Would you like to set this up as automation moving forward?

So you don't even have to go to the gpt to query it

It will just run the agent and provide it based upon the questions you are asking

So how many stores are using it?

So right now I actually had to pull it back down because you know, that's the beauty things technology breaks

So going through a little retooling of some of the infrastructure right now

But we did have two stores up and piloting

But the goal is to be

Middle of q2 to be back up fully live with all the agentic ai agents trend

What broke?

integrations

Yeah, the apis then so the connection back to okay, and then it just said hey, we're unable to return data

Is that a problem with certain providers and api connections? Are they intentionally breaking them or is it just

technology evolving

They're evolving their apis to make them stronger make them deeper rooted to be able to

Sustain the amount of queries that are coming not only from the gpt

But any and all integrations that are out there. So

I think we as an industry are realizing that integration part of this business is

Critical just like our data is our most valuable part of our business operation

Our partners that we partner with their integrations and strength of them is critical point for us to continue to be successful

But also at the end of the day take care of the consumers and make the job more effective for the team

So is there anyone in the industry that stands out to you that's doing a better job of

Strengthening those connections and preparing for what lies ahead in terms of you as as as

You know a creator being able to go integrate and and connect to your own data and use it

There's two

you know there's two that stood out met with uh out at nada about them and

It was pretty alarming the first was the team over at urban science which we talked about from deflection data

And I think that's monumental

um, and the other one was a new company out of the eu

That was like their first nada

But just a ginormous booth, but digging into their tech. It was uh incredible, which was the team over at pinewood

ai

Not sure if you saw them no no they saw everybody's what reynolds and

all the different dms providers and have been trying to do is the all in one

And they do it through the api system. They've built so

um big presence there go to come stateside here and you know 20 27 20 28

But um, you know, they had like 6 000 Porsche dealers all in europe and uh the UAE

So it was really interesting to see what they're building down to I don't know if you can see it

But my uh, you know applaud ai mic recording

Yeah, they have they have that functionality built into their crm for the salespeople

They can really just say we're recording and through that customer interview being able to gather your information sam

And it's querying the crm and the dms to see if your existing customer new customer

Measuring the sediment of the conversation and then pulling back being able to give you as a manager

Training information on this customer that's here right now. What's going on? What's the status?

Uh, I just think it's extremely powerful

To where we're going not there yet, but where this could be in five years is pretty exciting

So their goal is to use a gentek ai to use ai to just take everything out crm dms the whole thing

And connect everything into it as one ecosystem

Yeah, and if they've done that you mentioned they've got poor stores. Have they done that in the EU poor stores

They've had successful uh case case studies of it

Yeah, I mean it's been around. I found out I was shocked. They've been around for a long time. So

They just haven't made the president to the us yet

Yeah

So plot ai I think that's interesting you see ads for them on social media facebook and tiktok

That there's no shortage of ads for plot you see it. That's the the thing that you can wear

What are the privacy implications of that like?

Everyone you speak to gets recorded a do they object?

And then b, you know, do you do you need to have consent from a customer standpoint to have that going into a big database measuring sentiment?

What's privacy look like?

I think that's kind of the unknown in the mystery because it's so new

Uh, a lot of the state regulatory. It's uh recording, you know, your phone calls being recorded for quality assurance

I think we're all accustomed to that

yes, but

Your phone's recording everything anyhow

Is it really you know, what are the lines to it? It's very unknown

So do you believe so I've often thought this you'll talk you'll have a conversation with someone

Socially and then you'll open your phone and facebook will go to something related to it

Are are you of the mind that your phone is just constantly recording and that it tags keywords or?

Oh, absolutely

Really, okay

Yeah, my wife and I have done actually just

Fun times throwing random things at the wall that we'd never even talked about before to see if

Uh, our phones or our home devices. I'm not going to say the name. It's back there. It'll start yelling at me

But yeah, they're listening and able to serve up whether it's on social or google pmax or display or

Um, you know the amazon network

I've literally tested it comes up

So you're wearing the plaud

How do you use that in your workflow in your role as vp?

How do you use that to make your world better to help deliver better value?

It's for me. It's you know

Giving me the ability to laser into focus not only to uh, you know, stay organized and work efficiently across, you know

15 dealerships and uh, yeah all the gms and

Jugging the marketing needs and it needs and all the different vendor vetting that we're doing

But it's also to go back and measure

You know the sentiment of conversations and making sure that i'm not mistaking something so

You know, if you're having a meeting like we're having now and we were to sit there and replay

Your sediment and tone and inflection may be different than september when we talked and it'll pick up on that and it'll highlight. Hey

Sam mentioned this and a different tone than he spoke before

Ask questions for clarity and information. So for me, it's an organizational element

But it's also the ability to stay organized and be able to share data across the teams very quickly

I use this at all of nada. So every single vendor meeting I went to the hag event every presentation

Everything I had on and I'm literally, you know, you see everybody taking screenshots of

different screen elements

I literally was doing that inside the plot app while it's recording. So when it does a summary

It gives you the full takeaways the action items the details the next steps

But also a checklist of follow-up items to to do moving forward

So having that intensive note taking and sentiment taking and follow-up

Can you quantify the impact to your role? Like is there a quantifiable impact or is it just better organization? Is it what?

What's the impact to that? It's an efficiency standpoint

You know, it's an efficiency standpoint of one, you know myself and you know the support teams we have being able to juggle

As you know during your nada experience 14 hour days and it's crazy different media. You can't remember everything. Yeah

I mean you barely remember people's names sometimes let alone the structure and detail conversation

so I've played back every single one of the meetings and

Making sure that checklist items new vendors that we're coming to terms with

We're following up and staying on top of so it's a

Tool that I'm using for structure and information, but it's also helping myself

Utilizes for information, but also accountability

as need be

Okay, so now the question before we go on to our next topic because

We're almost there

Uh

Personal time do you continue to wear it at night in your personal relationships and have it take similar notes?

Or do you turn the thing off and say hey at the end of the work day? I'm done

I take it off at night. Yeah

All right, you'd be in trouble right with friends and everybody else like

There there has to be a line somewhere

But it's definitely there it's it's you've got to believe that being able to have those insights is somehow got to be a future

Something in automotive. Yes

Absolutely, it's and that's the the I think the challenge and the exciting thing for me is

How can this little piece right here?

Make our team's jobs more effective and efficient, but then also

Utilize this as almost their note taker for just daily tasks and things to remind them of

So that they're not forgetting issues and items that they're talking about through the day

Yeah, all right. Let's transition

Last time you were on the show. We talked about different metrics that that you look at and you trust lead volume vsr all that

You talked now about quiet leak deflection

Tell us a little bit about what that metric is why that's important to you

How you're tracking it and how it's moving the needle for you and your dealership stores in uh, february of 2026

Yeah, so uh, we did you know with our general motor store as part of our, uh, you know program of general motors

You know, we have the urban science data for sales alert traffic alert

Um, which are incredible to have and it's just a general awareness

But I don't think we had been using it effectively. So reaching out to them multiple phone calls with them

You know, what more can I get from this?

Yeah, so really digging in and i'm

Was looking okay. We have these lost sales. Why?

You know, what are these lost sales stemming from so working with the econ teams bdc teams

You know sales team sales managers. Hey, what's going on here?

Are we losing these deals because of price of poor follow-up?

You know, what is the stemming origin of it?

And through conversations over months. I'm like

There's so much more to this that i'm not looking at when we look at our

margin compression right now as an industry on on profitability

You know, we're a time where sometimes we have to make some cuts and we have to you know

Trim some of that off. We want to trim off the fat, but we also want to make sure we're not cutting into the muscle as well

Yeah, what are we doing to make sure that if I don't cancel this third party or pull back this budget from this component

That it's not going to have a disastrous effect. So how are you determining that?

Yeah, so what i've done now is i'm starting to utilize the deflection data

Of people who are coming in opportunity whether it's a lead a phone up or show and visit

whom are not purchasing with us but are purchasing a vehicle

and

tethering that back to the roi

On the cost per sale of the vehicles

We are selling to offset it because is it fair for us as a dealership to cut this company?

Who may be delivering us 35 leads?

And they're hitting all the kpi's for cost per lead, but the cost per sales out of whack

Is that that company's fault went out of that they're delivering eight people who are buying

So what have you found then it are these lost so you get a lead?

From a traditional digital lead source

And the rep says these are the best leads ever like it's a glengary glengloss proposition. You've got our you've got our best leads

And they're not closing are those lost leads dealer cost or what what is the route?

What have you found so some it's about 30 of it is you know

Dealer issues whether it's poor follow-up poor execution. Just we forgot to call them back and we're not perfect

It happens

You know or it's a situation that you know another 15 percent of it. We just passed on the opportunity

It just didn't make sense to uh

Compete with a store, you know

250 miles away when the customer loves 200 miles away. We'll never see them again

And they're just keeping their local dealer honest. That's okay

But is the same time are we utilizing the right information to make decisions on some of the vendors we do partner with?

so

I'm aggregating all of that cumulative sold data based upon that specific vendor

Of not only how many leads

They've sent us how many opportunities we sold from that but also how many bought elsewhere

because

If you're delivering me people who are buying cars that is your job as a vendor in market

Yeah, okay. So two questions here. Is there one digital lead provider in particular that you found

Hey, they've given us good quality leads and for whatever reason we there we've we've not closed on them or we've chosen

Not to or we've just fumbled it

Is there one that you've said? Hey, we're going to give you another shot because we think it's more on us

It's not it's not you. It's us. You've gone to them and said

Not yet. We're still doing a data download. We we've had the gm stores on now for above

Since it's been there, but really started digging in here

You know, november-december and we've actually just executed agreements to

Turn the remainder of the stores live

Okay, I have a small sample set of data from gm stores, but I want to turn it on

We're turning it on for every single march 1st and then it's a 90 day measurement

So with about 90 days sam when I see you in six come back

Yeah, yeah, come back because because the question I would have is you know gms sometimes will say hey

Traffic traffic traffic. That's the problem and I'd be curious your perspective once you get the data

You know, maybe even through your pilot stores. How often when gm say it's traffic. It's really process and it's fixable

Absolutely, and that's where it stemmed from. Is it the marketing person's fault?

or is it

a leadership opportunity or is it a training opportunity or is it a pure hate?

We had the opportunities, but I'm not going to go take those deals because it doesn't make sense for us to

Compete with those stores that are keeping the local people honest

And that's fine

At least we have the information to make an educated decision

And not cut the muscle, but there's opportunity to trim the fat off

Yeah, so once that's a little bit developed. We want to see it thinking about n a d a

Successful and and and high deliverables or or would you have liked to see more this year?

Um, it would my only feedback from any day this year in terms of what I wanted to see more it would have been

The fact of the timing it did it's trying to consolidate so much

You know the timing it's you know, you're kicking off the

The second month of the quarter, you know, I feel everybody's January was either really good or pretty brutal

So going into the second month with q2

um

It's hard to kind of get the month going with a lot of things but also stay focused on what the task at hand for n a d a was

But also, you know add another day

You know, we're we're killing ourselves out there, but align it to a better schedule better better timing throughout the year

Um, but also give us the ability to

As you were not have a 14 to 16 hour day. Yeah, it was the same mediums all the time

Just running all over the place. So i'm setting you up just a little bit for my next conversation

I've got a dealer up next who says, hey, you know what n a d a is great

But have you have you thought about canada's version of n a d a so I'd love to have you on back at the very end of the show

And talk about which is better n a d a or canada's version of n a d a

Jared so we'd love to have you back for that in just a moment. Thanks for sharing

Everything all plod with us. I thought that was a very cool conversation than this whole

Conversation about this quiet leak deflection and tracking it

We'll be interested to have you back at some point and learn a little bit about what you're finding your best digital lead providers are

And then those that are you know, is it us or is it them?

Um, we'd love to dig into that just a a little bit deeper

But jared killway vp digital ops cast auto group will have you back here just very shortly at the very end of the show

But we oh, you know what before we let you go though still anus. You saw the still anus announcement

What do you think about that limiting to one store? Why are they doing that? What's the play here?

I'm sorry. I forgot about that. I don't want to let you know

I mean that was that was very interesting literally found out about 45 minutes ago

You know that that had been announced and

I mean the elephant the room points to a

A block on carvana expansion to the new car market segment. That's what it points to but it's interesting

To see you know what that impact is going to do for

The amount of dealerships that are actually on the market right now on the buy sell side

Uh, and yosi actually talked really great about this at the hag event at nada

Of how many still anus stores are actually on the market for sale

What is

This new regulation going to impact

On the buy sell and actually transaction of cdj our stores and how is this going to affect their blue sky?

valuations moving forward

Yeah, it'll be interesting to see as this unfolds and we get more information. We don't know a lot yet

I wonder if that first glance that we have at it. We think hey, this is to prevent carvana from going deeper into stalinis may not be right

Stalinis can make

Obviously exceptions to this there's ways that they could bring carvana in I don't understand how

Uh, if carvana is delivering such ROI to to stalinis in terms of increased unit sales

They did it in the phoenix marketplace. They they've done it in each marketplace. They've been into

I guess I don't understand what their incentive would be. I guess other than keeping faith with the dealer body

I'm not sure why

What why do this and and yoga cars to that point comes into the chat says it might be deeper than carvana

They probably don't want too many buy sells happening

And I don't know if that's it either. Is it just to help lessen the buy sell workload? I don't know

I want I'd love to get the answers and and we probably

Don't know that right now

But anybody that has the perspective be willing to come on the show. He's sure would love to hear it

Because it impacts all of us where we are, right?

So absolutely. No, it's going to be interesting to see how this unfolds and what the root cause

Is and what this means for the business moving forward

All right, jerry killaway vp digital ops casado group hang hang back there for just one appreciate you being on the show

Always great to see you

All right, let's transition quickly to the north of the border a repeat guest devin devin callback general manager of subaru niagra devin

Welcome to the show

Doing fantastic devin you were just on the show uh november. So a few months ago

We absolutely loved having you on and hearing about being a subaru

Retailer in canada and some of the differences

So we won't dive a heck of a lot into that although I am going to put you on the spot here at the very end

And I am going to ask which is better nada or canada's nada

What what is canada's nada event called by the way just so we can get versed on this before we go to that round table

So it's called the ace conference. It's usually in october and it's in nega falls

okay, okay, and and

attendance wise

Roughly equal same different. Yeah, no again anything in the us. You guys are 10 times. We have

Around 70 vendors. I think at at nada. There's about 700

Yeah, so um, I know some of the vendors that we talked to and and that we know there was

A lot of money being forked out to have their teams there have their vendor space

Um, definitely a smaller scale. Uh, base conference. They do a great job

Um, but the nada show definitely opened the price

Okay, so we're gonna do a little round table here at the very beginning because bigger isn't always better, right?

And I wonder too if potentially a little bit smaller forum allows you to connect a little bit better

yoga cars comes into the chat says it's called

canada

C a and then a little play on nada, which that's a heck of a lot of fun

So yoga cars longtime commenter and poster into the show. Thanks for being here. So, uh,

Let's talk your last time here debon last time you were on you said drape drive ai

That was a folks far conversation was worth 20 to 30 extra units a month. Give us an update. Is that still holding true today?

Or is it different?

No, definitely still holding true. Uh, the last two months were about 21 deals each

From that platform

I just got our our yearly recap

from them

And the the interesting thing to see is with all the communication that goes out from their platform and that i'm sending out

We're talking, you know 80,000

Like contacts via email and uh and by text

And the unsubscribe rate is like less than 1%

So it tells us that our customers want want to hear from us and

Anyone that is thinking that uh too much contact

Um could be a negative. Um, I mean this is proving otherwise

Yeah, communication is it and respectful communication, but consistent communication is probably

Key you've made some changes in f and i as well. Tell us a little bit a little bit about that

What did you change people menu cadence compliance? What what did you change? Yes, so our um, I have one fsm

That's been with us since we've opened and and he does a great job and we have two other

Like f and i managers as well now and the idea

Someone else was on the show last week and was talking about the idea of not making decisions for the customers

And presenting 100 of the products 100 of the time and yes, um, we use a platform that's called, uh, fc drive

That essentially creates a tailored menu presentation

um

And all those products do get presented 100 of the time and

The the best thing about it is normally if you were to go through these products one by one

Um that meeting would take an hour an hour and a half

But with this fc drive presentation you're able to present all of the products and save time

Compared to doing like a step presentation

So is it it is it a person still doing the presentation or is it driven through the app?

So person is still doing it. Um, but there is a customer facing ipad that

Is grouping kind of three different options for them and then what different down payments work for them and uh

The customer is able to feel more in control of that situation with seeing everything in front of them

Interesting, huh?

And what's been the the the net effect to f and i have your dollars gone up down and if so by how much

So using fc drive, um, we have been seeing about a 700 dollar increase uh per contra. Oh, wow. Okay. Okay

um

So do you think?

What what caused that 700 was it the transparency and the consistency was it the the communication the way it's presented

What what led to that? What part of the system is working well?

Everything you just said, um, and I mean the big thing is not prejudging customers and

You know, basically taking a cash deal and saying well, you don't need this you don't need this

It's this is everything that is available to you

What do you see the value and let me talk about it and then see what it does

Overall to the big picture of the purchase

You don't see value in this and and again allowing the customer to kind of collaborate on that overall discussion

Yeah

Used is a big focus of yours. You've told us in your intake form here in february of 2026

You're doing some different things on subaru used be curious to learn a little bit about that

Yeah, so we I mean with drive ai and

Selling more vehicles into our database. We're obviously gaining more trades

I hardly ever buy any vehicles at the auction. Everything is in-house

Um, you know through through the service department through our database. We're pretty high penetration lease store as well

Uh around 50 and we're able to renew

Our customers at around 85 percent. So

We're able to kind of grow our use car inventory in house and the the thing that we're working on is

Within the subaru network in ontario

there's there's more used subarus on the market than there have been like ever before

And obviously seasonality kind of plays into it. We had like the worst weather

in january since 1938 in ontario, so it's

We had we had a ton of snow and and and crazy temperatures. So it's kind of like a chain reaction. That's that's built up the supply

Wow, so it's

You know, that's an astounding thing to say that you went from buying vehicles of the auction to now you're not

um, what what is the change?

With this ai that's enabled you to not go to auction and just

Get trade ins. How are you getting such a higher percentage of those trades and service drive vehicles? Everybody talks service drive

If you are truly successful at it

Well, it um, I mean again it there's a lot of dealerships out there that I I do not

Well, at least in ontario that I do not think are communicating to their customers constantly

and it's kind of you know, they're getting the the lease upgrade phone call when their lease is due in

16 to 30 days

And people's buying patterns and and and habits

Start a lot sooner than lease end and that's something that we've been able to get ahead of over the last two years

That's awesome. All right. Uh, we're almost out of time and I just want to have this little nada conversation real quick

So devon, uh, thanks for being on with us and sharing a little bit more about drive drive ai and how you guys are winning in canada

Here in february 26. Let's bring jared killway back real quick

and let's just talk about some of the differences that exist between

nada and

The event that you do in canada and I think devon you said this was your first time at nada in the us right this past year

Yeah, first time didn't know what to expect. I had a I had an idea

But it blew my socks off for sure. Yeah, do you agree with jared? It's just so big

It's tough to schedule it all you end up running all over the place, right? Yeah, there was it was um

Being able to see everything you wanted to see was next to impossible and then y'all

You want to carve some time out?

Me with some vendors that that you want to learn more about and maybe some that were we don't have the luxury to be as exposed to

um in canada, so uh, definitely hard to see everything and and some of the the bigger sessions

They reached capacity. So they had like overflowing and things like that too. So

Yes

The tool that you saw jared remind remind us what it was that's basically ai start to finish top down

Uh caused you to say hey, i'm gonna adopt the plot. I'd be curious if devon saw that while he was there

And if he has a take on it, what was it called? Yeah, that was um, you know pinewood ai pinewood. Yeah

Did you see anything like pinewood? There's a ton of ai on the floor this year? I I did not see them

Whether it was north building west we've made that trip 15 times a day

It was uh, it was pretty nuts

By the way, you had to take water and you had to take a backpack with you on the uh on the journey to west or the

I think it was north or whatever it was. So yeah, what what one tool what what's something you saw at the canada n a d a

That maybe we haven't seen here in the us that uh, we jared we might learn from

I mean all the there are very similar vendors. Um, and and they do migrate across, you know, both borders, but um

I wouldn't say there's anything that would be standout. That's different. There's there's all the same but ai uh in october

um when when the last ace ace conference was

It was not as kind of a huge

conversation point as it was

Obviously at at the n a d a show like there. I can't think of one

Ai vendor that I remember that was at ace conference. That was only like four months ago

And jared that probably goes a little bit to what you talked about just the astonishingly quick evolution of some of the tech, right?

Oh, absolutely. And to the to the point it's uh, you know devin was mentioning, you know

You got to wear comfortable shoes when you're out there at n a d a because uh,

Your average, you know close to 30 000 steps a day, uh going between the halls

It's very easily to uh to miss some of the pieces out there

You really have to go in with a plan to n a d a because if there's no plan

It's just pure chaos and uh, it'll overwhelm you very quickly. Yeah. All right. Well devin

We need uh jared and I need an invite to uh next year's ace conference and and then we'll all sit and compare uh notes

Some great comments online paul solzman says n a d a 28 will be in march in las vegas again

So we can look forward to that uh yoga. Uh, lauren kline says pinewood was super impressive. They're full suite

Take it or leave it

so

Anyway, jerry killway devin callback

Appreciate you both being on the show sharing your perspectives on all things ace versus n a d a. Thanks for being on today

Thanks, sam

Thanks, sam. Good to see you. Thank you. Good to see you as well

and uh

What what a cool bunch of conversations we had today. What a great show and to our daily dealer listening audience

Thanks for watching daily dealer live where you break down the biggest moves in the car business as they happen

Whether you're going to pace or n a d a whether you're looking for a i or you're quickening that use car turn

Don't forget we're here live every monday wednesday friday one p.m. Eastern

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