Car Guy Coffee & DriveCentric presents “DC20 Unlocked” Streamlining Showroom Operations

Hello, and welcome to the Car Guy Coffee podcast for this DC twenty Unlocked series brought to you by drive Centric. For more information or to get signed

up for the next DC twenty event, go to drive centric dot com.

Let's prove what is going on, car Guys in Cargas. It's Luvermiroz,

the Car Guy's fell an arts subprime hero and you are in luck everybody.

Today is another DC twenty Unlocked episode and we are excited to have a full posse up inside of the cafe today ready to brew some solutions bread. This

is gonna be a fun one. Man, is it gonna be fun?

We are here just in the nick of time, folks. I know we're

running a little bit late, but we have a great group of people to talk about something amazing and that's the process of how are we dealing with our customers inside the showroom and what's the best way to do it? And man,

we have some experts in here. We have some people inside dealerships that

know what they're talking about and actually execute these things inside their stores. And

we got you and I to come in here and just guide them around and have some fun with them and give them some high fives, right, they have some ver ones, right, But folks, you know what to do.

You need to tag a car guy and tag a car gal and share share, Share, Share, share Share. You got to get the word

out there, everybody, because we have a full spectrum show for you where we're gonna have people that are working inside of the store, people that are complimenting the store, and people that are actually working behind making sure that everything is operating correctly when the phones get connected to people and all of the good stuff in between. So you do not want to miss this and you want

to make sure that you get your friends in here. We want to go

ahead and tag a few fun people inside of the room, so as we get this show underway, we're going to try to make sure that the California New Car Dealership Association gets the shout out that they deserve, and you guys, get some people in this cafe today. What's going on? Eric,

Welcome to the passe, Welcome to the show today. We're excited that you're

in here. You are in Arizona right now. Brother, We appreciate you

and we missed you last week. It would have been awesome to see so

many more of our friends here at the Cane event because it was in the lovely Bluegrass and we had an credible, incredible time out here, and man, you should have seen Steve Brossler out there on the stage doing his thing, getting the whole room to be live with Rive and he was blowing some minds with what it is that the technology at drive Centric can actually do for you to be able to go to the next level, leverage the technology that you have, leverage the people that you have, and take advantage of the times that we're in everybody, because right now it's just getting even easier to

be able to communicate with the customer the way that they want to be communicated with. So we want to thank everybody for jumping in here. Bobby Johnson

over in Phoenix, Arizona, welcome to the party. We're excited that you're

here today. Keep tagging car guys, keep tagging og Bobby Johnson people,

what's going on. But let's go ahead and get somebody from the drive Centric

family up in here. He is not new to the brew everybody. He

is one that we definitely want to make sure gets his voice on a microphone as often as possible because he's always pouring out some of that great wisdom.

So help us to bring into the cafe once again the one the only man.

Welcome to the party. Brother, how are you Rob? He got

up? Only so many people have that hat? Brother, I got two,

I got both brands? Yes man, Yes you do. Yeah,

Matt, we got a great ensemble of people in here. Why don't you

help give everybody a little bit of content? So why it was so important

for us to be able to have this incredible group of people on the show today. Yeah we got Travis, We've got Zach, We've gotten next up

over here to talk inside the showroom? What leads up to the showroom?

Calling after the showroom, Just to be able to put everything all in one piece and to be able, like you said, communicate with your customers the way they need to be communicated with. And you're gonna have all the minds

from all the different pieces in the room today. Talk about that. Love

it, love it, love it we do. We have a lot of

different pieces that we're gonna do this chest today. And I'm excited because it

all starts with the people that are inside the dealerships, and I think that's who we should bring up first. I think the next person that's going to

come on the come out here on the screen is going to be somebody that works at a dealership local to where you are at. So it's cool because

you can actually go inside and actually see the process work inside those stores.

We've had somebody from that store come on the show before, Joe Brown, right, And we love Joe being on the show more than most other people.

He is Joe Brown is a great guest to keep having on the show.

But anytime we say Frank Lida, everybody probably thinks that we're going to bring Joe on the show. No, we actually have the man, the

general manager of the store, and I'm excited to talk about what's going on in his store and how his process is working. And that is the one

the only Trevis muss Well things. Guys. I'm happy to be here,

pretty excited. I know we've met a few times over Clubhouse, know Matt

very well and very familiar with these companies, and really excited to talk about how it plays out in the showroom and how to make things more effective for the customer. Exp excited to be here. Don't forget one of our first

ever speakers we had at DC twenty on our first one. Oh wow,

how amazing is that? And that's a great honor to have. There's been

some really amazing speakers that come out there and really been able to help other dealers grow. As you can see, DC twenty is exploding right now.

It's like everybody wants to be there, and it's like still a secret in a way, and I love that. And there's a lot ton of dealers

there. There's all kinds of education, but there's a lot of fun going

on between that too. And while the fund's happening, there's a lot of

business ideas being exchanged. I love so many business ideas that are being exchanged,

and we're excited to be able to keep getting more business insight from different angles of the business inside of the show. So please help us to make

welcome the next guest on the show. Before we get another brand, let's

just go ahead and bring in the Total c X, the Incredible, the one, the only what's that Fellas? Yeah, tell everybody what's going on?

Why you're here today? Man? We just have a beautiful integration with

drive Centric and a great partnership with Franklina and Travis, and we're able to do a lot of great things to help the customer experience of both the drive centric product and the dealership side of things, and told XA is able to merge those two things together and just completely increase that customer experience. We can't

wait to dig into a little bit more about solutions that you all brew for the industry. But when I was able to see the technology and we were

taking a look at it, not just in presentations but in actual action, it's incredible what it is that you all bring to the market. And we

want to make sure the dealers, users, all of those that would actually be able to benefit from this are watching today and taking notes on what it is that we can do to brewing something special with you all, everybody, because no matter what it is that you are doing or what it is that you've accomplished so far, the biggest room in the world is the room for improvement, and you've really want to make sure that you do get a total X spectrum on things as you do what it is that you do inside of your stores. But let's you know what, let's not stop guess what next

up? All right? And I'm excited about that we got somebody that's going

to be representing next up and I'm excited to hear a little bit what he has to say today. And that's the one, the only Mark string Fellow,

what's up bro show guys. Hey, I'm honored. I appreciate it,

so no, thanks for having me, and I will share with you all. This is my very first podcast another man. We we need the

ones for people's first man and we love that. Do you remember what I

called it? Into some podcasts right here? And this is the Car Guy

Coffee Podcast DC twenty Unlocked. And this is a great one to pop into

because you are in a room full of solutionaries and we are the sum of the people we surround ourselves with. Right, So let's grow today, Let's

show people what's going on. Let's explain why we're so excited about what we

have to talk about. And I'm pumped because there is the thing about what

we're going to do today is we're going to look at perspectives between the vendors and also between the dealer, right, And that's why we have Travis here today, and I'm excited to hear his perspective on what's happening inside stores because we can talk about our products all day, but to have somebody that can tell you how that product works makes all the difference. So I'm excited about

that, lou how about you. I'm really pumped up about it because no

matter what it is that we actually do inside of our business, if we're going to add tools, if we're going to add technologies, if we're going to add people, we want to make sure that we maximize the efficiency of what it is that we have access to. So the efficiency in the showroom,

car guys and car goals is what we're going to be leaning into today from all of these different vantage points. So make sure that you do get

other people in there. Eric, you're absolutely right you should be at the

next DC twenty. Make sure that you do make the plans to go ahead

and be there. Matt, When is that next DC twenty event going to

happen where somebody can come and maybe meet some of these people and get a little bit of a look behind the curtain of what's growing over at Drive Center.

Yeah, the next one's pretty excited because we're taking it a little on the road to Nashville and July July seventeenth and eighteen. That is so awesome.

Nash Vegas, Vegas. It is man. I'm excited when I heard

about that. I know that Steve's been living there for a little while now,

so he knows where all the cool spots for us to go out and really get education and really have a good time and get engulfed in the Nashville culture. I think there's one thing about Nashville, folks and car guys and

car guys out there. Nashville is a town that's growing and booming. And

if you want to be part of that type of feeling, be part of that town, and you're going to see that. You're going to see what

it's about. While we're there, We're gonna have a lot of good times,

great interviews. There's going to be great education, great speakers there.

I'm sure most of the people on the screen may be there. And that's

what's going to be pretty cool too. So DC twenty. These things are

not just little boutique like little Oh here's we got to know. There are

special events that I'm telling you people are leaving there with changed learning, new things to go to their dealership with and make a difference right now, not tomorrow, right now, and it's pretty awesome. So true. So with

that, let's go ahead and start passing the pot of coffee around a little, and let's go ahead and take it over to the car guys that are doing this every day that are searching. We honor and appreciate general managers that

are out there that are constantly looking for ways to be able to increase the efficiency inside of their stores and take things to the next level. So Travis,

we're just really just going to touch base and want to know what is it that brought you to seeking and utilizing some of the solutions that drive Centric has put up into the pot for you. So specifically with these partners that

are in here, drive Centric and the next Step and Total c X, they really are the perfect combination because it's I think in the business you brought it up. We were talking earlier before the meeting, and there's so much

shifts since COVID happened, where we quit selling cars, we quit caring about experiences, We just provided orders for people. And now you're back in the

car business, which is the people business, the relationship business, and a lot has changed. And what's changed is one is your employees have changed as

the world's turning, and I would consider myself a younger person who's no longer a younger person. So what people come into the industry are expecting is different.

So the software that they want to use it needs to be useful.

Yea, the experiences of the consumers now, the industry jumped to the everybody nobody's going to go into a showroom. Everybody's going to buy a car through

the computer, and I think that formed a renaissance of both things that moves some things forward. But I think we learned that people still want to come

into the showroom. People still are in the people business. We're not in

the car. We're in the people business. And all the things that we

used to get away with being inefficient, there's just not the tolerance for that anymore. So if you want to be successful, you have to give a

good experience, and having software that helps do that is really important. As

far as like drive Centric guy would say, just to speak to that, it's probably the I've had lots of different CRMs. I worked with Dealer Soccer

for a while, helped in the development of their Blackbird technology that they end up coming out with, and joined drive Centric a few years ago, and it's just been the first CRM that I would say, you can give it to your team and they'll just start to use it. You don't have to

make them want to use something that's enjoyable to use. It puts things in

front of your face, because what does a customer want in that frictionless experiences.

They want answers, they want you to reply, they want you to communicate, and it helps you do that really quickly. It is from the

perspective of drive Centric, I think that it's a CRM that if you install it, it legitimately will sell you cars just putting it in the store because gets rid of the fight to get people to want to use it. That's

a great point. And I love that you brought up drive Centric and seeing

what other tools look like and even help develop all the tools and then seeing what this is going on. And I believe, and I'm sure you do

too, Travis, is that you are helping develop this tool, right, even this tool, because they do get the input from their dealers all the time. And I love that because that is the big force of why they

are being so successful and growing the way that they're growing. And I see

it, and I'm I'm and I'm aware of it, and I'm able to meet a lot of dealers at these DC twenty events to be able to have explanation from each one. Wow, it's the testimonies are huge, and what

you just said there is big. When you have a product that your salespeople

want to use, it changes everything. It's sad because no matter what a

change of a product does make a big splash in a dealership, everyone freaks out. Man, I got to learn something new. I have to do

this, I have to go through that. Even moving and moving data over

it can be scary too. And when you go through a process that's unique

like dry Centric has, you realize what's so worth it Because my salespeople want to use it now, and they're going to not only use it, but they're going to flourish from it. It's proven. There's data out there right

now that show that deal that sells. People who send videos with their instead

of text messages and just calls are selling more vehicles in the showroom. That's

just happening. So you need to encourage that, and dry Centric not only

encourages it, but they give them tools to make it easy. I think

Travis hit the nail on the head about being young but now old kind of thing, like I hear people in their twenties talk and the apps they use like I don't know what the heck is going on. I feel like we're

that CRM that the older generation doesn't want to look at because they don't know what's going on. It's but it's what the people that are working will use.

Yep, that's so true. And inside of that, go ahead,

go ahead. Driving to say a lot of my career I started early in

my careers in business development, so I was in that world of making video before everybody was making video. And I remember creating the video and having to

have the device uploading it to a computer, making this HTML code to put it inside an email and hope that it wouldn't turn into a piece of spam.

And I remember how hard I thought, man, like I want to do this, but are we making it hard for employees to be effective?

And I think that that takes that out of it, where it's just completely integrated and you don't have to go through all that. And that's a challenge

no matter where it is that you are to be able to make sure that you're actually getting your people to utilize the tools that they have and be excited about it, because we are strong believers that whatever tool it is, you do have, at least useite right And that's often been the biggest struggle that we've had, is that either you have a management staff that isn't quite proficient with the tools and doesn't utilize them the way that maybe the sales crows or the other staff would use it, and then because of that, they really

don't know how to check to see if it is being used. At the

same time, introducing new people to it is hard to do if leadership isn't familiar with it, and if the current staff that are the super users or supposed to be the super users of it don't use it. Either if you

were dealing with old school style of cell cars, hey watch that guy do what he does and good luck, buddy, or if you actually had a process of being able to train somebody to be able to go to the next level or to be proficient in their job before they talk to their first customer.

You still need people that are effective at being able to show them what to do. But with that, what have been some of the challenges that

you've seen or some of the great news that you've had. When being able

to see new people come into the car business, come into your dealership and be able to adapt and switch to these new technologies, I think it's as we're bringing people in. Obviously, as I talked about being the older people,

for me is I'm a gen x. I guess you would call that

you have the generations the people that you want to come in and train.

They've been raised on technology, they have. Some of them never have actually

touched the computer, but lived on an iPad. And so if they come

into your dealership and we've been laugh at you, how many dealerships do you walk in and look at the computer and it's this Dell computer from two thousand and two and there's two different sized monitors and the mouse doesn't work. And

so when they come in, what is their expectation? And it's not just

about us finding the right people, it's about being the right place that the right people will want to be. So bringing them in, giving them resources,

giving them tools, training them on those tools. And for us,

one of our missions, I prefer to hire people that have not in the car business or sold cars, because I don't want bad habits and I want them to come in and learn how we want to do things and be trained on our culture and just the best way to give experiences. So it is

important coming in that you do it in the generation. I want to speak

to this, the younger folks. They expect you to train them. Yes,

they need you to. Yes. I got in the industry in two

thousand and five and they gave me a dealer plate and said, good luck, don't record tell so I survived. Yeah, it's great. But there's

so many there's so much talent that can is available that we just waste if we don't train and don't give them the resources. And I think that's really

important. So true, and there's such a flood of I guess we would

call them dealership hoppers right now. That are the two to three year car

guys and car gals that are feeling a little bit of a pinch in their pockets because of the way that profits are actually rocking right now. And so

now they're of course, you know, they're doing what has happened. And

as long as the car business has been around, people look over on the other side of the fence. They think the grass is greener over there.

Maybe I'll make the same money I was making doing less work over at that store, and now they're jumping in. So I can only feel the cringe

that sales managers have when interviewing somebody new and be like, so have you been in the car business? Yeah? How long? About two years ago?

No, we got to break these molds off of you and these mindsets off of you. So yeah, we're one hundred percent in all the new

breeds, bringing in a different perspective into our industry and showing them training this way that they can learn and actually be very proficient. And these days with

the technology, training is more crucial than ever. It's especially the initial that

onboarding showing them how to use it, because when they're a little foreign to them, they're going to be scared to use the tools, and then they're gonna lie about using the tools, and then they're gonna get let go, and then they're going to be because they didn't work out, And it's really it's because we didn't train them. So we spend all this money hiring and

doing all the these cool tactics of doing that, but once we get them in, like you said, Travis, people go back to the old school.

Still a majority not all right, but there's a lot of people who still go back to the old school of hey, here's a dealer tag if they do that anymore, and they're like, and here's just here's some product stuff. Go learn it real quick, come back and tell you see me

after you drove every car on my lot and let me know what you think about them. That's basically it. And it's sad. It's very sad because,

like you said, there's so much talent that we have let fall through our fingers, much like the deals that we let fall through our fingers as we go through to you know. And we can keep talking about that too,

because once we get all that kind of stuff going and we get the right people in, we start looking at cutting costs with departments that are not really supporting what we're trying to do anymore. So you've got to make decisions

there, right. So for you, with the new technologies, what kind

of you know, cost cutting have you been able to do to be able to provide the AIS taking over to help out with that that cost Really so it's again as a former business development director, to not have a BDC that kind of shows you the idea there is you don't in the you're twenty twenty four. I'm gonna this is just this is my opinion, But I don't

know that you need a business development center. I think your full store should

be that. And that is just realities and it's all. When I was

a speaker at DC twenty, my area was pipeline management and how quickly people make decisions. So like even we know that people put in less leads because

the information is bountiful. We know that when people show up, they've already

gone way further down the funnel. But you should focus your teams on that

early engagement because what I do know in your pipeline is people typically are going to make a decision within about five days to the latest, and if you're not involved early, you're going to lose. And most of those people are

going to buy a car. The majority of those people are going to buy

a car. But what you do in those first five days means everything.

So if you can utilize that AI for example, and let it maybe help you engage faster, or let it maybe do some follow up so your human beings can focus on that really early high quality engagement, then you can do more with that, and then you really bring that in. Also, it's

as you got these guys down below, like this phone system and the next up having all these pieces come together so that when they come into the store.

Because what I just said, not having a BDC, we were talking about this before the meeting as sales managers. The next up is a really

great piece of this because if you don't have a BDC, how do your salespeople know what to do? Yes? Because as a manager, like watched

a lot, but watch the CRM, but watch the phone, but make the video like how do you teach them how to prioritize? And so that's

these solutions around here today really compliment each other because if you have we have different kinds of people in the dealership, right, So the person that stands at the front door and wants to talk to that customer is usually the new person because they don't have any pipelines to manage or any follow ups to do their least effective, least educate, a least trained person and they're talking to a lot of customers and tying these tools in and not having a BDC.

That really the next up allows you to have that focus where what I learned is I had a guy that was phenomenal in building relationships. He would sell

fifteen cars a month because his name was Nick, and he used to be annoyed because people would stand at the front door. And I'd had that epiphany

where I'm like, man, what are we teaching our people to stand there and not follow up or to go build relationships? So what we established with

the next up was here, if you know that this is your time to engage in your CRM, make your videos, have great follow up, and this is your time to be engaged looking at customers on a lot that people need to know how to prioritize and execute. It's very important. And if

you give him that tool like the next up, they know that this is my time to engage with my relationship building, my prospecting and my CRM and do what you need him to do, especially if you don't have a BDC, you need something like that. And this is my time to be on

the floor, be aware, be watching a lot because let's be real, customers don't the dealership I started in back in the day, when there's five guys on a golf car smoking a cigarette wait for the customer to pull in, it's not really a great site, and customers don't like that at all.

They feel like they're getting like literally attacked. They already know what they

want, what they're doing, They don't need to be attacked. They actually

can probably guide you to where the cars on the lot and show you what's going on better than you can. That's the saddest part about it all.

But that's because of the training room. But that being said, Travis,

you said some really good stuff, and Mark, I want you to be able to chime in on all this because that was a heck of a toss up for you, right, he said, So, Mark, tell people a little bit about how you've seen dealerships be able to really utilize your tool so that their salespeople can actually be more efficient in the things that they actually want to do. Yeah, one hundred. Travis and I were talking about

this and he laid it out perfectly. And the conversations we're having the market

has shifted in a different direction. You guys had mentioned it, and the

conversation that I'm having with dealers right now is they're all trying to figure out ways to leverage their sales staff to handle more responsibilities because they're reducing that MEDC staff or getting away from it, figuring out ways to leverage them on internet leads and pham pops as well as show room opportunities. But in the open

floor environment right now, when we're having these conversations, they're trying to figure out how do we do that an open floor environment, how does a salesperson allocate time for both their follow up and catching their showroom opportunities? As a

sales manager, you're saying, hey, go catch your up, but go do your follow up right at the same time. So how do you allocate

How do I allocate time for both? Because if I'm doing if I'm working

my follow up, I'm at a disadvantage of catching it up and then vice versa. And so that's where we fit in, and we're bringing a visible

process. We let the dealer define the rules and parameters that they want set

within their queuing, within next up, and then just providing managers one hundred percent visibility to what's really happening in their showroom, not just what gets logged back in CRM. And the beautiful thing is, and you guys talked about

new hires are looking for structure processes when they're come in from a different industry and they come into an open showroom and they're like, you are your store hours on the front door, and you kill what you eat, and so again, just having just being able to provide and really streamline the processes is where we fit in. I love that, man, I really do.

And streamlining processes is crucial because I think that there's so many hours in a day and we all have the same amount, and if you can be more efficient in those hours by utilizing tools, that's the whole point of tools, not to take over what we do, but to make us more efficient at what we do. And I'll share this with you. There's roughly, just

based on the data that we collect, there's roughly four to five hours a day that a salesperson is not in front of a customer to what are they doing at that time? It might be more of that, but yeah,

but to your point, that's a good time. I think that's the salespeople

were filling that out right, right, But yeah, the survey says we asked one hundred salespeople. But yeah, no, you're right, though,

it's true, there's a lot of time throughout that day. You and I

we really focus on our training inside dealerships, on scheduling your day out and even to the point when you make your calls, when you catch your ups.

This way, everybody knows when it's the busiest part of the day to be outside, when you're be work by the numbers, work by the odds.

Just like when should you dial people don't dial like when they're at work or in all those weird times, dial them at times when people would be at home or when they would already be at work and Brady messing around their phone. So there's science all of this, right, there is, But

having those tools like yours makes them more efficient in those moments. Do not

have to worry about I'm outsiding up. I don't have to worry about that

happening that's being done because I'm probably when I walk back in from catching ups, I'm going to be able to have some more people to call, right, And that's what I love about what's happening. Yeah, I think there's

a connection to it. Mark is not even brought up to that is really

effective in as tools. There's an f ANDI section of that tool. And

so you talk about efficiencies in the showroom again, what experience you're wanted to provide, so we had it up, we have it up on display and you could see when people were cued to go to finance, because we all know that the biggest bottleneck in the modern car dealership that's not single point of contact is finance. And you have x amount of salespeople and you have only

a few finance people, So it's just a natural bottleneck that happens. And

when you can look at that how many times you have a salesperson it's a busy day, You've got three finance guys that are all three with ustomers, and there's two more cars sold, and they don't know what to tell the customers, and keep telling that customer just a minute, just a minute, and then it ends up being a bad experience for the client. Having their

tools where you can queue it up one, it allows us to look at how long it takes them to get a deal prepared to go, So can we speed that up right? Find that inefficiency and too how long does it

take to go through that process? And once you dial that in and start

pushing it down, you can look up at that board in the middle of a busy, chaotic day and know exactly what a wait time would look like and be able to give your customers good information to help streamline that. And

it just it works really well. But like all tools, like you guys

are saying, you have to use it, you have to use it, you have to lead with it. And if you use it, it takes

the showroom process, it takes your f ANDI process, and it just it's a chaos controller. It eliminates chaos. And the OEMs are putting a lot

of emphasis on the time of the deal, the duration of the deal, especially going through finance, you're still you're trying to keep those CSI scores up and so we measure all of that. And what I love about it and

I tell managers all the time, just like what Travis was saying, you can now deliver expectations back to your customer, but even your salesperson to say, hey, you know what, it's gonna be another forty five minutes before we get them in the business office, go out do or reverse delivery or take them through service. But keep them busy that entire time. And that's

the thing, and even maybe just taking that word busy right, Sometimes we're very busy and not doing anything right. And the sales pros are often saying,

Man, I'm busy, I don't have time for that, and then we do the research that says, nah, you've got a whole lot of time, but you just don't know how to actually use it. And we

can always be the ones that are searching for more and more prospects, more and more opportunities, more and more leads, and it could end up being a surfer of leads that they can't even get to because they don't have the efficiency to handle that excess amount of traffic that they don't have a process to actually process. With that, Total CX jumps into the mix, right,

Zach incredible at being able to bring solutions the table to articulate data. You're

doing all that data, the data that is needed to make the good decisions.

But for those that don't really know what total CX does and how it complements a CRM system and an effective sales team, please give our watchers, our listeners a little bit more of an understanding of what it is that you guys are brewing to help solve some of these problems that we're talking about.

Yeah, no doubt. So Total six is an end to end solution provider

for the telephany space, and so how we help drive centric is we are that telephnany provider that gives the telephone number to the dealerships, and those dealerships are able to leverage those phone numbers and use those phone numbers to connect with customers. So Travis was saying, how do those customers spend that time or

how do those salespeople spend that time communicating with customers? Total Sex is able

to give each salesperson a direct dial, and that direct dial increases that customer experience. And that direct dial is textable, callable. They can just completely

communicate with the salesperson. They don't have to call back to the auto tenant,

they don't have to call back and try to get to service because the salesperson is not available. All the things you hear about the complaints of a

customer, and then from there, all that communication pushes straight into that customer profile and drive Centric and so there's a seamless process for that customer and knowing exactly what's going on in those steps of the sales process. Travis talked about

those five days, how important are those and in drive centric, how quickly they're responding to text message how quickly they're responding back with a phone call.

And now Total Sex is able to give that solution to those dealers through drive Centric. And then the other thing you guys talked about is when should we

talk to customers? When are customers answering? We're also giving dealers those connection

rates, and we can do that through call volume reporting. We can do

that through a live dashboard reporting where managers can pull up real time statistics like drive centric has an email report, of a video report, a text report.

We give that on the telephany side, and so we're going to give you how many inbound, how many outbound? How many connections are they actually

making on outbound phone calls? Are they just saying they're calling? How many

times do we know salespeople say, hey, I made my twenty calls today.

I'll see you guys later. We actually provide that information, we'll provide

if there was an actual connection, and then we're also going to provide missed opportunities. We talk about car deals slipping through your fingers right earlier, and

so managers don't have time to listen to every single inbound phone call, especially for sales no especially to size like Travis dealership. They're doing hundreds of calls

a day outbound and end inbound, so we're able to push true missed opportunity alerts. And I talked about this a few weeks ago with Travis as we

were reworking his phone. Some that they're not always missed out because of things

that A customers are saying. But wouldn't you want to know every time AI

thought it was a missed opportunity and you get it straight to your cell phone and you can communicate not only the audio, you see the customer information, you see the AI summary, and you see a transcription of everything that was set on that call real time within ten seconds to your sell. Those save

deals, and those I've seen dealerships sell ten more cars a month because of that missed opportunity alerts about ten times twelve. That's one hundred and twenty more

cars a month. Man, And that's just a random number I'm thrown out

there, But it's a true thing that happens in the daily that dealerships and sales managers have no idea how many times there's sales people botch calls and they just don't know. And so we're able to do that real time. And

then the summary is not only help the managers, but they all push into the customer profile. So in that customer profile and drive there to have the

text, they're going to have the audio, and they have the AI summary, and that all happens within seconds of that call ending and pushing into drive centric and earlier. Like I said, increasing that customer experience. Now everyone

knows exactly what's going on with that customer, and the customer now knows exactly what's going on with that car deal. I love that, and that's exactly

what I'm talking about. You can never be surfetted by information like that.

As long as you get enough of that, there's always more. I always

want to know as much as I can to help my customer, and I know customer wants as much as they can to be able to help them have the educated purchase right. They want to make sure they're doing the right thing.

They want to make sure they didn't get ripped off right. There's so

many things that make them feel so insecure. So we have to make sure

that both way, the communication, the way that we communicate, how we communicate and man it makes confidence happen. And confidence is the key to everything

with your salesperson, with the customer, with your dealership, you explode.

It's the same thing as trust, right, and that that's what it does, ultimately builds trust. So I love that. I love what's going out

with drive Centric. Drive Centric is not scared at all to team up with

other companies so that their product is better, and that's so that their customer's experience is better. Right, It's phenomenal. And Matt, what do you

think about this? What made you guys really there look at other places and

really have collaborations to make this experience better for your clients. I think to

piggyback off what Zach said bringing that summary in the call recording, when you have that ability to see all the customer interaction with the different vendors in one spot, text, email, phone call, and then you piggyback that we're talking about salespeople being too busy or busine versus productive, they don't have the time to do follow up. Now you take in two. We come in

with the AI was long term, followed with our aim. She reads those

notes, she reads the call, she reads the email, and when you don't have the time to reach out to the customer, she's going to catch in so no one gets the ball dropped on them and read everything you have in the CRM and reach out with that personally touch the customer. So it

all just flows into one spot and it makes it very crucial for that customer relationship. I love that. Speaking of the ball drop, So you all

have a urn that you use for just like most football lovers out there, right, you will have it set into your system to recognize when a fumble actually happens. I love that. And so when seeing that and recognizing how

the technologies do tie together to be able to make sure that we do maximize the opportunity because folks, just as much as our salespeople have very limited attention span, so do our customers. They are not hearing it if it's not

rhyming with the song that they were playing in their head, they are changing the channel and quickly the salesperson packs. I don't even know how they happen

anymore. When the average people average visiting about one point two dealerships inside of

their look for a vehicle, so that means the pack sitting outside looking for people to just steer away from a cat isn't happening anymore. These people are

not pulling into the lot unless they're pulling up on the car. They've already

researched, and in a lot of cases, they already have half of the finance options reach their hand or a check from one of their lenders already walking into the store. So with this and all these technologies, we got three

technology companies in here, one representative from an actual dealership, and a couple of trainers that are right here, all brought together to augment an incredible sales professional or what should be an incredible sales professional that has many different tools inside of their pistol belt. Travis, what have you seen as salespeople have had

access to many tools now and very little tools before? What have you seen

as being some of the challenges and being able to make sure that we recognize all of the things that are put in place to set us up for success and help us to advance. So it's funny you say that as they were

talking about it's fragmentation, right is a huge challenge and why we discovered Total CX was a phone call for me. It was a phone call to drive

Centric and saying, man, I can't stand this fragmentation What I mean by that is you need it. We all know legally how important it is to

communicate through our CRM legally, but also how many phone numbers. I would

challenge every dealer that's listening, he is going to see this, how many phone numbers are hitting your customers and how confusing is that? And that's what

led me down that road. Is Okay, now we have this text number,

we have this mainline number, we have this number, then we have our client's cell phone number or our salespeople's cell phone numbers, and obviously there's a lot of challenges when they're not using your tools. That creates lost communication,

that creates the fumble, right because you don't know what's going on with that is on their iPhone and their I message and it's not in your CRM right legally, and just from the experience, it's a bad thing. When

we partner up with Total CX. One of the huge thing that I like

is how do most people operate in society today. They have this in their

hand right, and there's a phone system. I don't have a desk phone,

it's right here. So everybody that walks around with a fold in their

hand has a phone you don't. We're not tied to a desk anymore.

So do they want to use that? Go back to the usability When they're

texting the customers, they're texting them in the CRM and through this system with one phone number, they can call that number back and not get an operator and big complain about it. You go into the black hole that has most

storage phone systems, it's broken, and this puts that together. You take

that same thing for the managers. As to what you're saying. I want

to touch on Fumble because I have a really interesting story that you're not teaching your managers this. You're missing the boat, but having all the phone calls

going in there and having your managers. I want my managers to log in

as little platforms as possible. Yes, that's all they want. They don't

want to do that either. So excited when there's everything in the watch in

the drive center, they can see it, they can hear it, they can be in it. That fragmentation goes away, right. So on that

note, that's what where Total CX is. It works well. It's mobile

mobile device friendly, which is awesome. And just having that one phone number

and just letting your people bring the communications into your CRM it it's a game changer. So tying that all together. What were you guys were talking about

with fumbles? And I had a manager, probably one of my best managers

I've ever had. His name is Sean, and he would just make more

car deals. I would take a car salesperson that would sell eight cars a

month and they were talking about this person wouldn't maybe make it, and I would move them to his team and he would become an eighteen to twenty car salesperson. And what was happening was what his secret sauce was. And if

you see this, Sean, kudos to you. But his secret sauce was

he would just sit and look at that button of unreplied conversation. Yes,

and he would just look at that button, which is probably the most powerful tool in drive centric and he would just open up those conversation and then get involved in coach, get involved in coach, and he would run circles around every other sales manager. He actually increased us. We gave us the highest

market share we ever had against our competitors. And I really do tie it

to his ability number one as a leader to get involved and not just sit back, going to happen. Number two, how to use drive centric to

just watch that moment of impact when the customer as asking a question and just helping them so that that right there alone is more than any red And I looked at other CRMs. I've shopped and done some demos, and you're always

keeping your eyes open out there right for the world and technology and the amount of clicks that other CRMs hide these important moments in. It shouldn't be that

way. And I think if you have your phone system in there, you

have when they call into the stores on a black hole, you've got this engagement with the next up and managing the chaos on the floor, and then you have your managers really watching what's happening and that information with drive Centric just being put in their face really quickly to act on it. It's really the

perfect combination of being affected, yeah, and just a piggyback on the fumble and the unreplied messages is I can tell you that most stores, ninety nine percent of stores will reach out to the lead very quickly. But where I

see where the ball gets dropped and where the customer gets lost is when they sit on the sidebar and not being responded to their text or email answers back.

That's when you lose them, and that's when the dealership down the street takes them from you because we're not responding quickly enough. Bingo and I love

this. This was Travis brother. You are a great advocate of what we

have going on the show today and what an honor to have you on here to talk about what's really working. And that's the thing. But the key

is in like to your sales managers you talked about Sean, shout out to him. He did the work, he used the tool. There's a lot

of great tools, folks, whether we're using Total CX, Next Up, Drive Centric, whoever you're using. The key is use it when If you

actually use it and you have enthusiasm and you not just be a leader, but you also be a coach to your team. Because you can use these

tools to do both, your team will take more market share. Your general

manager is gonna love on you and talk about you on podcasts, and there's gonna be a lot of great things going on in your life. You're gonna

sell more cars and make more money. And that's ultimately why we're here,

right We want to impact lives. We do, but we do this for

our families too, and you want to make a better life for your family.

Use the tools around you. They are amazing. They can change everything.

Some tools you're gonna have to click five, six, seven, eight nine times before you get to where you need to get to with one or two clicks when you go to drive Centric. So shout out to drive Centric

for making it easy for the user to be able to get the data that they need and be able to speak to the customers at a faster speed.

Man that is ryan you might have. But keeping in that rhythm, we

want to highlight that again, drive centric is for car guys and gals buy car guys amen goals right, So there is an honesty inside of the way that it gets looked at to see is this actual going to be something that makes us more productive or stays on the busy side or on the ignore side?

What is it like working with a company like that mark that you do recognize is all about Hey, I do want to know about my next stuff.

I do want to know about my next opportunity, and I actually want to get rid of the fluff because we don't have a lot of well, especially the managers. And that's where I would credit the managers an honor for

them. Most of them are working from ding to dong, right, they

are non stop doing something all day long. And whether it's trying to capture

a deal mentor sales pro or do something like that. But what is it

like actually being able to work with people that are taking that car guy vantage point? Yeah, you look at the overall picture. Like you mentioned,

the managers have so many different things going on. It's we bring that extra

layer of visibility so that they can see within the system in real time when sales reps are taking ups right, and that way part of the sales process is early manager intros, which most stores are being towards. If they haven't

done it already, do it because it substantially increases the overall you know, closing ratio. Right, get involved early and often do that too. But

what we find is that without next up, dealerships are missing about fifty percent of the opportunities. They're not being accounted for right, and they're not being

logged back in the CRM. So there's this huge gap. I was sharing

with Travis there there is this formula that I was sharing with a dealer the other day to help them find missing opportunities because they were on the fence about moving towards next up. And I said, you make a substantial investment to

drive traffic to your lot, right, every single month, you make a substantial investment to get those ups to your lots. Yeah, how many of

those are you getting? So if you look at NADA came out with a

stat many years ago and it's starting to normalize again, the four three two one. If a salesperson has four opportunities, they test drive three seventy five

percent right up to fifty percent and close at twenty five percent. So if

you want to identify quickly how many opportunities aren't making it back in the CRM, if you take the number of units you sold times for the four opportunity right, and then subtract hit the total number that's in the CRM, subtract the difference, and then run that closing ratio whatever it might be, twenty five percent, And there it is, and so we close that gap.

I love that. I love that you close that gap. You also have

a solution. I'm I saw some data and I was reading something about you.

You guys have found a way to help dealerships avoid taking legal hits with the new pagal laws PGA. I don't even I don't even know what that

means, the AGA laws in California. Can you tell us a little bit

more about that real quick. Yeah. So, the state of California put

a new law in place, and it's essentially and it's a cross all all businesses in California. If a employee doesn't take a mill break within a certain

window of time I think it's either four hours, they are liable for a class action loss. Oh my, So now think about it in a car

dealership, right as far as clocking in, clocking out and having all this captured so that you don't get hit with the pug of law. So in

a car dealership, they don't take lunch breaks, or maybe they do and we just don't know, and they take some other breaks, but they have to have this documented within a four hour window. So what we did is

we took notice. We have a lot of clients in California. We took

notice this law and said, how can we help with keeping them compliant within this law or just help them protect them from getting a lawsuit. And so

we know when a salesperson puts their name in the queue, and we measure time so we can send them a notification within that four hour of saying hey, it's time for your mil break, and then they have the ability to either accept or decline. And that way it's not protests the dealer. I

love it. That is phenomenal. That should be all I think all over

the whole United States this way. There is no I know that there's this

state doesn't have that law, but they should still at least know that they my managers that were offering it as a leader, I would want to know.

I'm wondering what actually were the sequence of events that led to that being something or legislator. There are some people who got sued. I guarantee it.

I guaranteed the are some employers they got sued. And it was just

like and the dealers were getting hit pretty as soon as they put it in there. California, it's got all the attorneys right this mad loved all California

dealers. It's a huge market out there, but it's a tough place to

sell cars. They have some crazy laws out there. I know that for

sure. I'm very blessed to be in some a different state. So that

being said, I love visiting. I love going down to Cali, but

that's about all I like to do there. I absolutely love all the dealers

out there, some really great dealers out there doing big things. I got

some great friends out there too, So shout out to Creaks, reach out to next up on that man. I'm telling you, if you guys are

confused about how that works, reach out to them. And they have a

solution that is very easy, simple done. So I love that great stuff.

Man, it's a really good show today, y'all. I think that

I'm going to see you guys. Yeah, exactly. And now we're about

to get some new ones and over in Missouri the laws about to change.

So all right, they got solutions though. We got one right here,

so we're good to go. And that's what we do. Man. We

brought you guys a surf out of solutions and I love that we did that.

Yes, we definitely did. And we want to make sure that you

guys and gals that are out there that are watching, whether it's on the replay, whether it's right here on the live or you're listening on the podcast, that you do check out what is actually broom with all of these incredible individuals from Matt to Mark to Zach. See what it is that they're brewing.

Check out their website, see what it is that's cooking inside of the kitchen that they are making some really good stuff that is pliable and it's not something that's just so access in tools and features and things of the comment and how we're pointing out how we do we want to log into less things.

The less things that we can log into to put a car deal together or to check and see what's going on with our team, the more interaction we're actually going to get with it. And Travis, we do definitely honor and

appreciate your vantage point because we need to see this from all levels. So

many times, a great technology is a great idea until it's put into application, until it gets to the lot, and until you actually truthfully have to explain it to a car guy that thinks a little bit different than most other tech people that are looking at the solution side of it and say, man, this totally makes sense. But the car guys, we often keep it

on that, well, is it going to help me sell another car?

Is it going to make me build another relationship. Is it going to help

my people be better? So we definitely appreciate that. And Zach brother,

we always honor your creativity. We also honor how it is that you deliver

what it is that Total CX does because people need it. And shout out

to Zach because he's just a good dude. He is straight up man.

I always enjoy seeing you, my friend. I appreciate it all. We

get to see you guys too. We appreciate everybody that's been on the show

today. And there is one last thing I got to do and make sure

that we get everybody dropping some F bombs man, making sure that we do well. Who doesn't like to drop F bombs man? Focus and fly so

that we can keep growing all the time. Time. This DC twenty Unlocked

edition has been definitely packed with some solutionaries up in here grinding out what it takes to get a good BROWT for you. But right now we're gonna go

ahead and throw our hands on our shoulders. Everybody hands on the shoulders one

time, and we're gonna get focus fly on three one two three, begin focus, focus, fly like growing, keep rowing, hey, and before we get out of here, how can everybody get a hold of you?

Mark? Oh? Uh, you can reach me on my cell eight one

seven six five eight three four sixty six, get eight one seven six five eight three four sixty six or email me at m Stringfellow at the next up dot com. That's an easy one right there. My friend appreciates you,

brother, thank you for being showing Zachy tossing it up to you. How

can they get hold of you? Yes, sells seven one three repping the

h Town four nine eight one six five eight seven one three four one eight one sixty five and email z A C at Total c X dot com another easy one. And of course Matt brother, how they get a hold of

you? Talk to you and call you first and then no kidding, that's

what they can call. Hey, if all you all anybody out there,

if you just want to reach out to us to get connected with anybody on the show, you can absolutely do that too. We'll be happy to connect

you. So now just getting the number for me is three one four four

seven nine nine one four four and then m T I E R N E Y at drive centric dot com. That's right. And those that want a

nicer, newer ride and are in the area. How do people get a

hold of you, Travis, You come see me. I'm actually a Frank

Leader, you a GMC down here in Cape Girardo, Missouri, and uh, you can actually reach me at five seven three six one nine six eight three seven my total c X number, and or you can get me at T Morse T M O R s S at Franklita dot com. Man,

I love it. Hey, folks, if you guys want to get him

on your podcast, reach out to Travis. You crushed it man. You

definitely are very good at what you do. Man, I like it to

see why you're sitting in the seat you sit at. That's right, love

it man. Thank you so much everybody for tuning in. I am Lou

Ramirez, the car guy, and I'm felling Arts Subprime Hero and from Drive Centric you've been hearing from the one the only Matt Tyrney, so we're so thankful for him, and from next up the one the only Mark string Fellow, and from Total ce X the Incredible, the one, the only Zach Kercher, and from Frank Leda, we are so thankful that we got the time of a general manager to jump on the show. Thank you so much

for joining us, the one, the only, Travis Most. We will

see you all on the next DC twenty unlocked and make sure that you make your arrangements to be at the next d C twenty event. You Soon we're

out pace, yeah,

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