“CRM Is Broken!” Why Static Workflows Kill Deals (And How to Engage with Shoppers In Real Time) | Matt Leone, CEO of DriveCentric
Car Dealership Guy Podcast
“CRM Is Broken!” Why Static Workflows Kill Deals (And How to Engage with Shoppers In Real Time) | Matt Leone, CEO of DriveCentricCar Dealership Guy Podcast · Apr 23, 2026
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Concept
static worklows
Static workflows are fixed steps that don’t change when something unexpected happens. In a sales or customer support context, that can make people wait or get stuck—so it can hurt the deal.
The episode is basically saying the dealership CRM process isn’t working well anymore. The fix is to respond faster and coordinate better with customers.
Salesforce is a popular computer system dealerships use to manage leads and customer messages. The host’s complaint is that some setups only work for the sales team, even though many other employees talk to customers too.
The F&I manager is the person who helps finalize the deal details like financing and add-ons. The episode’s point is that they’re a key sales influence, so they shouldn’t be left out of the customer tracking and communication.
BDC is a team that reaches out to leads and helps set up visits or calls. The episode says if the BDC is talking to customers, their activity should be captured in the CRM too.
DriveCentric is a software company that helps car dealerships handle customer communication. In this episode, it’s mentioned as part of the fix for how dealers use CRM tools.
Real-time engagement means you talk to the customer right away and keep up with what they’re doing. The episode says slow, checklist-style follow-ups can cost dealers money.
Rigid task management is when the system makes you follow a fixed checklist, like “call tomorrow” or “send an email later.” The episode says that kind of slow, scripted process doesn’t match how shoppers actually decide.
This means using fewer separate systems so everyone at the dealership communicates in a consistent way. The goal is to avoid confusion and delays that can hurt sales.
Topic
Circle of our communities
This sounds like a dealer community where people talk about different companies and tools. The host is saying that when a company shows up a lot there, it usually means other people are noticing it and talking positively about it.
Company
CDG Circle
CDG Circle sounds like a group/community where dealership people share opinions and talk about companies. The host uses it like a “buzz meter” to judge which companies are getting noticed.
Topic
Static workflows
“Static workflows” refers to fixed, pre-set steps in a CRM or sales process that don’t adapt quickly to what a shopper is doing in real time. The episode’s premise is that these rigid workflows can cause missed opportunities when shoppers expect fast, personalized responses.
A Rolodex was a physical organizer for business cards and contact info. The point here is that CRM started as a digital version of that—just storing contacts instead of paper cards.
Microsoft is mentioned as an early player in the CRM software timeline. The host is using it to explain how CRM evolved from simple contact lists into more structured tools.
SAP is a big software company used by many large businesses. Here it’s being mentioned as an early approach to CRM that emphasized managing tasks and processes.
Lead management means handling potential customers from the moment they show interest. A dealership uses it to make sure leads don’t get lost and that someone follows up at the right time.
CDK is a company that provides software dealerships use to run sales and customer follow-up. In this segment, it’s mentioned as part of the dealership tech ecosystem that grew around lead tracking.
Company
Reynolds
Reynolds is referenced as another company involved in dealership software. The host is grouping it with other tools that helped dealerships manage leads over time.
A reporting layer is the part of the system that turns activity into charts and summaries. It helps managers understand what’s happening with leads and tasks.
Tech bolt-ons are extra software features added on top of an older system. The speaker’s point is that adding patches doesn’t necessarily make the main system smarter or more responsive.
A digital retailing widget is a small online tool dealers add to help shoppers move through the buying steps without calling or waiting. Here it’s mentioned as another add-on that doesn’t fix the underlying CRM problem.
This is the idea that dealerships end up with lots of separate software companies doing different tasks. The problem is that even if you add more tools, the main CRM system may still not work better for shoppers.
This just means the app works smoothly on a phone. Since most people shop on their phones, a mobile-friendly experience can help dealers respond faster and keep shoppers interested.
“Native video” means the system includes video tools right inside it. That can make it easier for a dealer to send a quick personalized video to a shopper without extra apps or complicated steps.
“AI bolt-ons” are extra AI features you tack onto software after the fact. The point here is that you shouldn’t rely on lots of add-ons if the main product design already supports better conversations.
A general ledger is the main accounting book for a business. The episode uses it to show that finance tracking and customer tracking should be handled by different systems.
Oracle is a big software company. Here it’s used as an example of the kind of system dealers rely on for financial and compliance data that needs to be accurate.
DMS is the dealer’s main computer system for day-to-day operations like tracking cars and managing dealer processes. The point here is that it shouldn’t be mixed together with the system used to manage customers.
CRM is a tool dealerships use to keep track of customers and their conversations. The point here is that a CRM shouldn’t just be for sales tasks—it should help the dealership respond to customers across departments while they’re actively shopping.
A CDP is a system that gathers customer information from different places and tries to make it usable in one place. The host’s argument is that dealerships shouldn’t have to stitch together too many disconnected systems to manage shoppers.
A service advisor is the person you talk to when you bring your car in for maintenance or repairs. They’re the link between you and the shop, and the segment says they should be included in the same customer communication system.
“One voice” means the customer hears consistent answers and guidance, no matter who or what system is responding. The segment warns that using lots of different AI tools can lead to mixed messages that confuse shoppers.
Company
gentek AI
They mention “gentek AI” as an example of AI tools that dealerships might use. The takeaway is that AI should help the dealership talk to customers in a consistent way, not in a bunch of separate, conflicting ways.
Lotlinks is a company that makes software for car dealers. In this ad, they’re promoting an AI tool meant to help dealers decide what to do next with their inventory.
Lot GPT is an AI tool for car dealers. The idea is that it looks at what cars you have and how shoppers are behaving, then suggests what you should do next.
VIN-level data means looking at each specific car by its unique ID number. That helps a dealer figure out which exact vehicles are selling well (or not) and what to do about them.
NADA is a big industry group for car dealers. When someone says they announced something at NADA, it usually means they’re sharing it at a major dealer conference.
A service engagement hub is a single system that helps the service department keep in touch with customers. Instead of each step happening separately, it helps the dealership respond faster and more consistently.
F&I means the finance and insurance part of the dealership. An “engagement hub” is basically a central place to manage how the finance team talks to customers.
A sales engagement hub is a single place that helps the sales team manage conversations with shoppers. The goal is to keep the dealership’s messages consistent and timely.
Term
magentaic AI agents
This sounds like AI “helpers” that can interact with customers. Instead of a person doing every step manually, the AI can help start or manage conversations across different ways customers reach the dealership.
Here, “pods” means a dedicated group assigned to help a dealership. Even though they work virtually, they’re meant to be the go-to people who can answer questions quickly.
They’re talking about getting help instantly from a real person. Instead of waiting on a form, email, or a fixed process, the dealership can ask a question and get an answer right away, which keeps things from stalling.
Virtual onboarding means training and setting things up over the internet instead of in person. It can be faster, but it depends heavily on clear communication.
Instantaneous support means getting help quickly when something goes wrong or you have a question. For dealerships, quick help can keep sales and customer follow-up moving.
Remote customer experience means how good the service feels when you’re not meeting in person. If everything is done online or by phone, the way people communicate matters a lot.
A forcing function is like a rule built into the process that makes you do the right thing. Here, doing things remotely means you must communicate well, because you can’t rely on face-to-face help.
Installation and onboarding are how you set up a new system and teach people to use it. If that part is rushed or confusing, the tool won’t help as much as it should.
A “virtual launch” is when a company starts a new program using online tools instead of meeting people in person. The point is that dealerships can get set up and supported remotely.
They’re saying they got a lot of car dealerships set up fast—about 180 stores in a month. That matters because the faster and more smoothly you help dealers get started, the more likely the program is to succeed.
Extended hours means support is available longer than usual. For dealerships, that can help them respond to shoppers faster instead of waiting until the next day.
A “touch point” is a moment where you connect with a shopper—like a follow-up message or help when they’re ready. The idea is to stay in contact throughout the buying process, not just once.
Term
pod numbers
“Pod numbers” sound like internal labels dealers use to keep track of different parts of their marketing or customer interactions. Instead of describing everything in detail, they refer to each one by a number.
Real time engagement means talking to the customer right when they need help, not later. If you respond while they’re on the lot or looking at cars, it feels more helpful and less pushy.
A mobile device is just a phone or tablet. The idea here is that if dealership tools work well on phones, sales teams can act faster when customers reach out.
Voice assist means you can talk to your phone to do tasks. In sales, that can save time when you need to update schedules or move a lead to the right person quickly.
A “hot lead” is a person who seems ready to talk or buy soon. The idea is to identify those people quickly so you can respond while they’re still interested.
They’re talking about how to measure when a shopper is truly interested. The idea is to look at behaviors—like being active on the website and sending texts/emails/videos—and use that to decide how to respond.
They’re saying video works well because people interact with it more than other content. But the important part is tracking what people actually do—like how many times they watched. Then the dealership can follow up with the most interested shoppers first.
Engagement tracking is measuring how interested someone is when they watch or interact with content online. Instead of just counting clicks, it looks at things like whether they watched the video and how much. That helps the dealership know who to contact first.
A visitor ID is like a digital label for a website visitor. It helps the dealership figure out who that person is (or at least that they’re the same person) and what they clicked on. Then the dealership can follow up based on that behavior instead of guessing.
“Triangulation” means using more than one clue to figure out what a shopper wants. In this case, it’s things like what they looked at on the website and how often they watched a video. With those clues, the dealership can decide who to contact first.
“Genius” is the name of an AI feature inside the product. The idea is that it helps the dealership notice important things happening with a shopper and respond better. Instead of waiting for a manual process, it’s meant to help automate smart follow-up.
An engagement gap is just how long you take to respond after someone contacts you. The idea is to watch that timing closely because long delays can make customers lose interest.
A dashboard is a screen that shows important info in one place. In this case, it helps the team see who is responding and who has been waiting too long for a reply.
P&L is a dealership’s financial scorecard—basically how much money it makes and what it spends. The point here is that poor lead follow-up doesn’t just hurt customer experience; it can hurt the dealership’s bottom line.
This is a simple way to measure how productive each salesperson is—how many cars they sell. If that number stays flat for years, it suggests dealerships aren’t getting better results even after investing in new tools.
They’re talking about using AI to score and analyze how each salesperson is doing. Instead of guessing, the system looks at patterns and helps managers coach people more effectively.
They’re talking about reading how customers feel from what they say. If you can tell whether someone is positive or hesitant, you can adjust your approach to improve results.
They’re saying training should be based on what’s actually working with customers. Instead of guessing, use data from the people who are getting the most real interactions.
Concept
real-time reporting vs historical look-backs
They’re saying you shouldn’t just review past numbers. Instead, you want information that updates as things happen so salespeople can adjust immediately.
Real time information means the system updates instantly as things change. Instead of waiting for end-of-day or end-of-week reports, you can see what’s working right now. That helps managers coach reps and adjust outreach while shoppers are still engaged.
A leaderboard is a ranking chart that shows who’s doing best. In this context, it’s used to spot which sales reps are performing well. The important part is figuring out what they’re doing differently so others can improve.
Concept
customer gets to the dealership
This is the old way where you do most of the important stuff only after the customer shows up at the dealership. The newer approach tries to help before that, so the visit is easier.
An agent dashboard is a screen salespeople use to see what customers are doing and what they need to do next. It helps them keep track of messages and follow-ups without missing things.
This is the annoying part of car shopping where you have to deal with lots of places to get a good deal. The goal is to make it easier so you don’t have to repeat the same steps over and over.
Here, they’re describing AI that acts like a helpful assistant—someone who can understand what you mean and respond naturally. The idea is that shoppers want the experience to feel human and helpful, not like they’re being pushed through a strict checklist.
Large language models are AI tools that can understand and write text like a person. The host is saying that if you use lots of different AI tools that were trained differently, they may respond in inconsistent ways, which makes the customer experience worse.
Conversational AI is a computer program that can talk with people like a chat or voice assistant. The episode suggests that using it alone isn’t enough—you need it to fit into the dealership’s overall customer process.
Integrations are how different computer systems “talk” to each other. If they’re connected well, a dealer doesn’t have to re-enter information or lose context during a customer conversation.
Centralized experiences means using one main system (or a tightly connected set) to handle the customer journey. That helps avoid gaps where the customer has to repeat themselves or where follow-up gets missed.
A customer engagement platform is the dealership’s “front-end” software for talking to shoppers. It helps respond to questions and move people to the next step, like setting up a visit.
A handoff is the transfer of a shopper/deal from one department or process step to another (e.g., sales to finance). The segment emphasizes that without integration, handoffs become points where customer records and context don’t carry over cleanly, causing “leakage” and a worse experience.
The desking area is where the sales team works up the numbers and deal details. In this discussion, it’s one of the places where the process can break into separate steps.
Term
FNI office
“FNI office” appears to be a transcription of “F&I office,” which stands for Finance and Insurance—the department that handles financing, warranties, and insurance products. The segment highlights that moving a customer record into F&I is another common handoff point where leakage can occur.
The cashier is the final step where the deal gets completed and payments are processed. The point here is that each step can become a bottleneck if the dealership’s systems don’t talk to each other.
An integrated system means the dealership’s tools share information with each other. When that happens, the next department gets the same customer details, so the process feels smoother.
Darwin here sounds like a software tool the dealership uses. The host’s point is that using multiple separate tools without integration makes it harder to keep the customer information flowing smoothly.
Concept
service of sales
Dealers have different departments that handle different steps of the buying process. “Service of sales” here means the systems and processes that help sales teams respond to shoppers and move them toward a deal.
“Leakage” means leads slipping through the cracks. If the sales and service teams don’t share information in real time, shoppers can get ignored or lose interest.
Instead of using separate tools for different departments, “one platform” means using a single system. That helps the dealership keep track of shoppers and respond faster without losing information.
A “voice agent” is an automated calling or answering system that can interact with shoppers by voice. In sales/service contexts, it can capture intent, route inquiries, and trigger follow-ups—helping reduce response-time delays that contribute to lead leakage.
Term
telephony
Telephony means the phone system. In a dealership setup, connecting it to software helps make sure calls are answered and tracked properly for the right customer.
An AI widget is a small piece of software on a website or app that can help answer questions. The goal is to interact with shoppers quickly instead of making them wait.
A partner hub is a place where different companies’ software can plug into the same system. It helps dealerships add new tools without building everything from scratch.
An API connection is how different software talks to each other. With APIs, the dealership’s systems can share information automatically instead of relying on manual steps.
Topic
direct competitors
They’re talking about other companies that compete for the same customers or deals. It’s a business context point, not a car or repair topic.
It’s like having two different notebooks for the same customer. If both notebooks get updates, you can end up with conflicting or repeated information.
A “centralized customer card” is a single unified customer profile that aggregates data from multiple sources (website leads, call logs, service history, etc.). The point is to prevent duplicate or fragmented records so sales and marketing teams can manage the same shopper consistently.
LIVE
The first flaw was, in Salesforce push this, it's meant for your sales team and sales team
only.
Why?
You have, in a dealership, a service advisor who is a sales person, an F&I manager who is
probably your best sales person.
You have your sales team, you have your BDC, you have your marketing team, all talking
to customers, including maybe even the cashier clerks and parts.
If you're talking to a customer, why aren't you in the CRM?
Today, I'm joined by Matt Leone, CEO of DriveCentric.
The automotive industry is currently struggling with extreme tech bloat and a CRM category
that hasn't fundamentally evolved in decades.
Matt breaks down the shift from rigid task management to real-time customer engagement
and explains why dealers must consolidate their fragmented tools into a single cohesive
voice to protect their margins.
A big thank you to our sponsors for making this episode possible.
Lotlinks, CDG circles, and of course, DriveCentric.
Now let's get into the show.
Matt Leone on the CDG podcast.
Matt, welcome.
Great to be here.
Good to see you again.
Finally having you on.
I know.
It's exciting, right?
I've been for you since I saw you at NADA.
How's it been?
Yeah.
It's been a whirlwind.
Everything post-NADA is just as busy as everything leading up to NADA.
It's been a whirlwind in Q1, but all positives.
Spring's finally here, so hopefully get a little bit of a breathing room here from Q1.
I think of you as this CEO whisperer, you, and I say that in a positive manner, of course,
you are a mastermind, automotive mastermind, which has become a gigantic company, and
you were a CEO there.
A couple years back, you took on the role of CEO at DriveCentric.
To me, as a student of the business, something stood out about this, because not back then,
but today, and I'm not saying this to gas you up, I'm telling you objective numbers, data.
But when I notice a company that falls in the top 5% of mentions within CDG Circle of
our communities, I start asking questions saying, what's going on here?
Why is this company being mentioned so much, and why is there such positive sentiment?
Not everything's perfect, and we'll talk about the not perfect as well.
But it seems like things are working, at least from the outside.
So I want to think about the last three years, or three to four years, when you decided to
take on big CRM, let's call it, for all intents and purposes.
What drove you to this space?
Well, first of all, I love your platform, and I love the concept of Circle.
So it's great to hear that we're mentioned a lot there.
It means a lot to us.
And it is definitely one of the things, knowing this industry really well, knowing the auto
tech software industry really well, I studied it, I've been learning it, I've been involved
with it for so long now.
The CRM category itself goes back to the 80s, and it was digitized the Rolodex.
That's all it was.
How do I take what was on a Rolodex for those that are your audience that don't
know what that is?
It's like a business card on a little flip wheel, and you would have an email or
a phone number or home address on physical business cards.
Somebody said, let's digitize this.
And that was the first CRM.
And then around the late 80s, early 90s, Microsoft came out with something.
Salesforce wasn't quite on the scene yet.
SAP had something, these big companies, horizontal companies, not into specific
industries.
And they were like, well, let's put process and workflow and tasks behind
this so you could hold your expensive sales reps accountable to leads and
lead management.
It was very effective.
And everybody needed the CRM.
And then along came Salesforce and said, OK, well, we need to do more than that.
Let's make it a communication platform.
Let's start to do email and text through this platform and put a customer
in the middle of it.
And you could see this evolution.
And then Reynolds started and CDK or E-leads rather started.
And you kind of see this evolution in the vertical of auto tech.
Round 80s into the 90s, and it's doing very similar things that
were happening outside of auto.
Let's automate certain things.
And the three most important things was hold your sales team accountable to
leads with workflow and tasks, well, wrap a reporting layer around it so
management could see what's happening, give visibility, and then allow it to
be a communication platform for typically email or chat.
And it got stuck there.
It just stayed static.
And that is one thing that history can tell you is, you know, why?
Why do companies stay static?
Well, usually it's M&A or acquisitions or this is all it's
meant to do.
And then you get tech bolt-ons wrapped around it to prop up product.
And you see that in auto tech right now.
And you see an explosion of it.
Like I need a video widget over here to do video.
And I need now a phone widget over here to do phone.
And I need a digital retailing widget over here to do this.
And I need a, you know, chat widget over here to do that.
And all of a sudden you have 40 different vendors all getting the
data and the CRM category stayed static.
It didn't move.
It didn't innovate.
It didn't do anything.
And then the cool thing with the auto tech industry, as you mentioned,
mastermind, I could list off a dozen companies that do some amazing,
disruptive, innovative things that have sprung up over the last 10 years.
And DriveCentric was one of them.
We're a 15-year-old company.
And I think they took the approach of let's scrap this idea of workflow.
Let's work on engagement.
And the idea of engagement is totally different than tasks and workflow.
We're going to engage with customers.
And how are we going to engage with those customers?
We're going to have a philosophical different approach.
And we're going to do it with a mobile-friendly application that wants,
have users want to be in the DriveCentric platform.
Simple, beautiful, clean design system, mobile-friendly, modern, and native.
You don't need to bolt all these bolt-ons on.
One of the things DriveCentric had was native video.
And that was kind of new at the time.
If you drop a lot of your tech stack, then, you know, we put in genius.
And you could start to drop a lot of, you know, some of these AI bolt-ons.
And I think that's where kind of evolution got us, is saying, OK,
the evolution was a new disruptive area of CRMs to do something more.
And I think that evolution is just at the starting point.
You said a lot of things there.
I want to touch on a couple.
So first of all, my, I'll tell you a personal story here.
My wife is pretty frugal.
And a couple months ago, I noticed she started buying these, like, gummy bears.
They're like, healthy gummy bears.
I'm like, what are you buying? What is this?
And it was these, you know, this company called Groon's, apparently.
Long story short, today they announced, literally like an hour ago,
they announced that they sold to Unilever for a billion dollars.
A billion with a B.
And I started wondering, you know, again, I'm a student.
Like, I love marketing.
And I said, like, I'm looking at the packaging.
This was like an hour ago and I'm looking at the packaging
and I'm trying to understand what the heck did they do?
Like, what was their positioning?
What did they identify in the market that they triggered something
in her brain to go and spend money on these fricking gummy bears?
Sure.
And then do it multiple times.
So I bring this up because I thought I think about the status market.
And, you know, our vision at Cardio Shop Guy is we say, I believe in a world
where in the next five, 10 years, every dealer has a DMS, a CRM and CDG.
We are their external eyes, ears, you know, look at the world.
And so, OK, so I said the table there, right?
What do you believe a CRM needs to be right?
How do you unlock that that success at the margins as a CRM?
What do you think is the ideal state?
Any dealer who's listening right now, who's benchmarking?
What does that success unlock at the margins?
I love that question.
And you said something also I want to double down on, which is in every other
industry, you have a general ledger, you have an accounting system,
my tax, my compliance, my system, a record from financial reports.
It's Oracle, it's Microsoft, it's SAP in the auto tech industry, it's your DMS.
That needs to be clean, pristine, and it's accurate as a source record
to connect your OEMs, to be able to push financial records,
be able to manage your inventory.
That's its job.
And it needs to be separated from the job of managing your customers.
And in every other industry, you have two platforms.
I don't know why in auto tech, we've confused this world.
I have a general ledger, it managed my financials.
I have another system that's dedicated solely to managing my customer
and my revenue outcomes.
And so if we agree with that starting point, that there are two
fundamentally important platforms, DMS and CRM.
Before I decided to come to DriveCentric, I did a lot of soul searching
because like, is CRM dead?
Is it a category that doesn't need to be there anymore?
Not because of the DMS, but because you have all these bolt-ons,
you have all these solutions, AI was starting to come on.
And you're like, is this fundamentally still a platform?
And when I thought about it, there's two flaws that happen
in the evolution of the CRM.
The first flaw was in Salesforce push this, it's meant for your sales team
and sales team only. Why?
You have in a dealership a service advisor who is a salesperson,
an F&I manager who is probably your best salesperson.
You have your sales team, you have your BDC,
you have your marketing team, all talking to customers,
including maybe even the cashier, clerks and parts.
If you're talking to a customer, why aren't you in the CRM?
The CRM, by its definition, the very name of it
is a customer relationship management system.
C for customer, is it the heart of the term?
So if you step back and you say, how can I evolve the CRM
into a source system to manage my customer?
What happened in auto tech?
Well, we went from a CRM just managing my sales tasks
to then, well, I need a marketing platform for this.
And I need a digital retailing for this.
And I need a CDP to do all of this.
And we have this tech blow.
Why can't the CRM do all those things?
It is fundamentally the most important platform
because I'll turn the question about, you know,
and have your audience think about,
what's the biggest asset a dealership has?
It has to be the customer.
It's only asset a dealership has.
They have inventory, that's assets,
but it's not the value of having inventory.
It's the value of having customers
that want to buy that asset from you.
So if the customer is the most important thing
in your dealership of value, then the emphasis
needs to be on that platform has to be one
that I want my users in, all of my users in.
And it's the one that I want engaging with my customers.
And I think that is one of the big evolution steps
that has to happen this year.
The second huge evolution is if I agree in that
that it has to be my BDC, my service advisor,
my sales team, all in this tool.
Then if you think about a gentek AI
and you think about where that's going,
you need one voice talking to your customer.
You can't have 40 different voices
in different large language models with different bolt-ons
trying to talk to your customers
and then trying to cram all that back into a CRM.
It becomes very challenging.
So there are two big next step
evolutions I think have to happen.
First, it was just modernizing it.
Natively, the second is going to have to be make it your tire.
Anybody talks to a customer has to be a user.
And then the third is going to be
let's start consolidating all these bolt-ons
to be able to have one voice to my customer,
one manageable voice to my customer.
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OK, that makes sense.
But if you had to identify,
what is the secret sauce today
that is leading to your customer happiness?
Why are dealers happy with your product?
Can you identify?
Like, can you isolate one thing
or is it a function of the fact
that you are building a product
that works across every single department
and then centralizes it to create one voice
for the customer?
What is, you know, is there one thing here
or is it multiple?
I think the second thing you said
is where we're striving really hard for.
We announced it at NADA this year, right?
But service engagement hub and F&I engagement hub,
a sales engagement hub, all on one platform
with magentaic AI agents
to be able to talk to customers,
whether it's through a reception or voice or BDC or video.
But I don't think that's why people love drive centric yet
because that's the next evolution
that we're putting out into the market
and try to lead that evolution.
But why do they love it?
I think the reason is maybe three prong
that I feel and I'd love your audience
to provide some feedback to us.
But one is there was a very innovative thing
our founders did, which was we created these pods.
And pods are assigned for the life of the account
to manage the account, support the account,
but they're all virtual.
And our pods do an amazing job
providing real time human being answers
to a dealership on helping them.
And right through the tool,
I can chat with them directly in the tool and say,
hey, I'm stuck here.
What does this do?
Or how does this or what is this new widget?
And I get instant support.
And I think that was bearable.
So you have this is a live human on drive centric side
communicating with the dealer.
Yeah, exactly.
And through the platform.
So whether I'm on my mobile app or I'm on my desktop,
you can get to a drive centric support person
or account manager immediately through the platform
and we launch you, we set you up,
we configure you, we train you
and we always do it virtually.
And I think the industry never heard of I'm going to install a CRM
and I do it virtually.
We've been doing that for 10 years.
And that, to me, is amazing
because you form a relationship, you understand the dealership,
you understand the dealership settings,
you understand the dealership's needs.
We are going to be a virtual account,
but we are going to be instantaneous support for you.
So I think that's one bucket.
Wait, so stick on that.
I want to hear the other two that's two interesting things.
There are number one is in a way it's a forcing function
to make sure that you have an incredible
remote customer experience set up with your company, right?
You have no option.
If you're doing installation remotely,
you have to be stellar at communication.
You can't patch that because that's your entire business.
On the other hand, if I would have been pitched that
a decade ago, I would have been very skeptical
because one of the first rules I learned in business
is like, you don't innovate HR,
you don't innovate legal, right?
It's just like, don't try to, you know,
come up with these crazy mechanisms.
It's like, there's certain things where like, let it be,
like these are not the areas
that are going to create outside success.
To me, this kind of falls in one of them.
It's like, this is, you know, it's like, oh yeah,
installation and onboarding.
It feels like very dry,
but I can see how you've taken that muscle
and channeled it in a value add direction,
which is, hey dealer, you can get,
you can communicate with me at any point at any time.
I have someone right there that's extremely receptive to you.
So Touche, I like that.
Very novel.
I can't take credit for it.
We had three founders, Dave, Phil and John,
and, you know, you take a risk as an entrepreneur.
And 10 years ago, you're like,
I'm going to disrupt something.
I'm going to do it different than the others.
You don't know if it's going to work,
but a virtual launch is still to me amazing
that we do that.
And we've been doing it forever.
And we launched, last month,
we launched a record number of dealerships.
The fact you could onboard 180 dealerships
in 30 days, different dealerships in 30 days
do a completely virtual and have, you know,
the highest CSAP scores that I've ever seen.
I love the launch.
I love my pod.
I love pod eight.
I love pod 12.
They're amazing.
That, I think by itself was revolutionary.
And I think we just continue that and make it better.
We just launched extended hours.
We can support, like we're there for the dealer
to be able to make sure that there is a,
there's a touch point to help them
wherever they're at in their journey.
The second one.
I wonder what dealers, I wonder,
I wonder what dealers think about this.
Let me, I'll write this in circles.
Yeah, sure.
After what pod they like,
and they'll say give them a pod number.
Cause we, we reference them as pod numbers,
that pod eight or something, or pod four.
But, but I love reading those comments.
Like I love my pod.
All right.
Let's, let's see what people think
about the virtual launch.
All right.
So you're about to take us to the second,
or let's say step two of the secret sauce
to drive centric.
What is it?
I believe heavily that, you know,
users aren't tethered to their desktop,
especially if you're in sales.
You're out on a showroom,
you're out on the lot,
you're out on delivery.
And I can't think of a mobile device
in the auto tech industry
that's not consumer based dealer based
that is widely as adopted
and loved as drive centric's mobile.
Every feature of drive centric is on our mobile device.
We have 120,000 users,
60,000 active in any given time
on our mobile device.
And it grows by two or 3000 every month.
And in Google or in the Apple store,
it's some of the highest rated app out there.
It's just easy to use.
And we're making it even easier.
So we rolled out like a genius voice assist.
You could talk to your phone like Siri
and say, hey, who are the appointments I have on today?
Or, you know, hey, I'm calling out sick.
Can you move all my leads
from one person to another?
Mobile was such a revolutionary thing.
I think people love using drive centric
because it was where they wanted to be,
which was on mobile.
And a lot of the lagging companies didn't catch up on that
or had a really bad experience
or only partial experience on mobile.
And so that was number two.
I think we did a really good job with mobile.
Is that novel
or do you think it's just like operational excellence?
Because the salesperson is torquely
has never been tethered to their desk.
Arguably, they are more tethered to their desk today
than they were ever before.
Exactly.
Yeah, because you had more, you know,
you had more ops and drive-by.
When it was conscious revolutionary,
I think mobile was table stakes.
However, you asked the question,
why do people love drive centric and experience?
Drive centric, when they came off
of whatever platform they came off of
did not have that same experience.
And so we were just better than everybody else
in that area.
And it was a need in the market
that people really were happy with
having that in one platform.
The third and final one was,
again, we got away from this concept of workflows and tasks.
Yes, there are tasks that you can assign in drive centric.
But we had a simple dashboard.
And when you log on,
you're looking at who's engaging with you.
Who's in my website right now?
Who do I have to have my hot lead right now?
What do I have to do today
right now to engage with this customer
and what customers are engaging with me?
And we looked at it and flipped it upside down.
Every other CRM in every category
and every other company looked at
here are the things you need to do
and just tasks and workflows
and you just cranked through it.
But you could have had amazing engagement happening
and just totally blind to it
because you were too busy doing your tasks.
And so I think one thing that drive centric did
that was revolutionary was just flip that upside down,
focus on where there's engagement
and put everything you got toward that
because there's a customer active and engaging with you.
And we're gonna make that super simple
for you to understand and use.
And yes, if you need your traditional,
like I get all my engagements done,
what else do I have to do?
Yeah, sure, we have tasks and workflow
and stuff of that nature.
But that was a really different approach this year.
I mean, I think those three things,
world class support done differently,
the ability that we were there mobile for you
and then different approach
to how to manage your customers
was I think the third element
that put drive centric into a different category.
How do you think about modern day engagement?
Like what are we looking at today?
A dealer that wants to maximize their conversion
and their sales, right?
What are they, when you say we measure engagement,
what drivers or what signals do you take into account
and weight the highest
when it comes to customer engagement?
When there's a customer that's active on your website
that is actively engaging with you
through text or email or video.
And one of the things that we put natively
in our product was video
and we see the highest response rate
and adoption of consumers interacting with video
and video is not new
and it's not sort of revolutionary.
But if you can track that engagement really well
and understand did they view it
and how well did they engage with it
and get that sort of text going with that customer
and then you could track the effectiveness
and responsiveness and then in real time
you could look at a visitor ID to your dealership
and map it back to that.
Now you're connecting dots and you're saying
here's the triangulation of this customer.
They were on your website,
they viewed this video six times last night
and this is highly engaged
and we'll put that at the top of your list
and say let's do something with this customer.
Wrapped around all of that is our Genius product
which is our AI which was natively built
and in Genius it's there to catch anything
and the original approach of Genius was
the dealership salesperson is not there 24 hours a day,
seven days a week
but if there's engagement happening
Genius is picking that up and doing something with it
and so that long-term sort of safety net
where I know somebody that's engaging
is at least getting responded to immediately.
Super important and so I think for us
it's how fast are you re-engaging with the customer
and we track it in minutes and seconds.
If somebody's interacting with you and you wait a day
you've lost that customer
but if you can track that down and show in a dashboard
and show a filter and show your managers
and show the entire team,
hey this customer has had a four minute gap
in engagement here and they're active with you
that's like somebody showing to the showroom
and nobody paying attention to them.
In the modern world we're living in
if you're not there talking to that customer
and so we put a ton of emphasis on
you know showing that visually
like where is customers engaging
and how long is that gap been
before they've had re-engagement from the dealership?
Matt how does all this actually reflect on the dealer's P&L
or ask differently I should say
have you, you know one of the stats
that I bring up on this podcast a lot
is the fact that the average sales per sales person
per dealership hasn't budged much in decades
which is it's deeply concerning
when you think about all the added investment
in technology and tools that you know
dealers have added to their dealerships
and so when you think about that
you know do you know what is the average number of cars
the average drive-centric sales person
or in dealership sales person
who uses drive-centric sales
or like how do you actually translate everything
you just mentioned those three things and the fourth
and then say this is the net result of our success
and why this is working
because it's all about the money baby
something that dollars does
that's what it's all about at the end of the day
yeah we just developed something
I'm really really really excited about
so let me let me answer
I should tell you're excited I like it
are about to roll out
one of my companies I was at a few years ago
was called SuccessFactors
as an HR human capital management software company
and SuccessFactors managed performance talent
things of that nature
and so a little bit of a background on that area
and when I got to drive-centric
everybody asked a similar question
how's my sales team doing
who's the number one on my leaderboard
and how did I define that
and every dealership defines it slightly different
it's response rate it's deliveries
it's everybody had a little different definition of this
and so we created a performance management agent
and what it essentially does
is it looks at the quality of your videos
the quality of your texts
the quality of your emails
the quality of your response rates
the quality of the deliveries that you do
the gross profit that you did
it takes so many factors into it
and it generates essentially a performance review
for the general manager or the sales manager
to have at their fingertips
for every single salesperson that's touching a customer
and it'll use AI and kind of create
here's their strengths
here are their weaknesses
here's how they stack up against their peers
here's how we would coach them differently
and it's there to be able to kind of help
the sales team understand
what is Joe doing differently
that I'm not doing
and what we learned in this was
in your getting back to your question
just because I did a hundred videos
doesn't mean I should get five stars
I could have only created one video
but sold 30 cars
what is it that you did in that one video
that was effective
what was those texts or messages
was a sentiment of the customer
that you did differently than the person next to you
did differently
and so we're getting to that next layer
of stop looking at quantity
the good quality of what you're doing
and stack rank that against your dealership
and all the other people in there
so we have something called drive score
kind of a gamification
the next level of drive score
is really beginning to heart your question is
hey, how do I raise the bar of everybody
and give them that real time feedback
constantly of what do we see working right now
and it's gonna even flow
it's gonna be different
six months from now or a year from now
but it's gonna be a constant raise everybody
off from to be just excited
well, you know, dealership training
is an area that has seen growing investment
in recent years
and it sounds like what you're talking about
this sounds to me like a massive training opportunity
across dealerships
I mean, this is like what you said
this is way beyond a CRM
when you're getting into like
performance improvement
and that really starts to overlap with training
and I just, it seems like it's a
where is the best data to inform that training
it's where the salesperson
or whoever is interacting with the most
so it seems to make sense
that that's an area where with lots of room for improvement
think about the way that things were done
for 20 years within an auto dealership
you had a report
usually if you asked your CRM
create you a customer report
the manager would take that report
and then circle highlight things
and then have a review on Monday morning
and say here's what's working right
and then have a whiteboard
and say we got to improve in these areas
well why can't we just drop reports
like why can't we get to this world
where reports are just historical look backs
tell me what's happening real time
and allow me to have the system
tell me recommendations
that happens in our personal life
right why can't we have that in our work life
and so I don't know if it's an extension
outside the realm of CRM
as much as CRMs are always managing people
it was one of the core three tenants
of what a CRM is supposed to do
is manage my reports with my people
we're just elevating the game
to change the evolution of what the CRM is supposed to do
yes there's reports
and we can create lots of reports
but why can't the system kind of give me back
real time information about how my team's doing
who's on the leaderboard
and why are they in the leaderboard
what makes them more effective next person over
it's just a evolution of what a report is in my mind
what should I expect over the next couple of years
in terms of my sales force right
you are building
Steve Jobs built the iPhone right
we're all like this in front of our phones
and our screens now like he created that form factor
and it changed the world and our lives
and in this case
you could tell I like this question too
well I wanna
cause I think based on what you're telling me
is am I expecting not to have salespeople in three years
and the agents do all the work
until the customer gets to the dealership
or how automated are we really going to get
I'm trying not to just say AI
because I wanna focus on the outcome here
right what's the outcome that you are striving for
when we designed our new agent dashboards
and we designed how we think we get rid of workflows
the core of what you just said though
is no I absolutely don't wanna get rid of the human
I'm personal consumer
I just bought a car for my son
I wanna talk to a person
I wanna be there and I wanna pick it up
and I think I'm not alone
I just don't wanna go through the hassle
I don't wanna go to 12 different dealerships
I wanna be able to kinda look what I need
go to the dealership shake some hands
and make it a seamless experience
but there's still a human interaction
that I want in my life
just like in travel
I don't wanna I travel a lot
I don't want to deal with humans 90% of the way
but guess what when there's a problem
I want a human there
and I wanna talk to a human
there's a balance we'll find
however the way we're designing the system
because you asked what are we designing
how are we designing this?
Yeah
Not necessarily complete
It's 2005
What are you building for me for 2007?
Yeah
And I'm using obviously the iPhone analogy
But if you rethink agents
and you say step back and treat it like an employee
and everything in our design sessions
is always treated like it's a person
you have to hire this person
that person has a job description
what did I hire you to do?
So you have to hold them accountable
you have to coach them
you have to mentor them
you have to give them performance feedback
sometimes fire them
but we don't think of technology as an employee
we think of technology as like a tool
and it's AI was a co-pilot
it was an assistant for me
but now with agents
it's not an assistant anymore
it literally is an employee
and if that employee is there
hold them accountable
and so the employee that's there working on payroll
needs to become more of a manager of agents
and I'm managing people
and those people, agents
I'm going to hold accountable
and I might give them feedback
it through coaching
hadn't like how you handle that customer interaction
change
Hey, I want you to have a softer tone going forward
change
the way that we have to interact with technology now
is thinking of it as a personal person assistant
and say you got to do what I want you to do my way
this is our values, our mission
this is our way we handle customers
and this gets back to that
you can't have 30 different bolt-ons
because you can't train 30 different agents
in different machine learning language
with large language models and say
I'm going to expect the same way to talk to a customer
so the way we think about this is
employees are going to be there to greet the person
manage a person that comes in
give them wonderful customer support
answer their questions
but when the consumers at home
in front of their phone on the sofa shopping
they want to be able to talk to Joe at the dealership
as if it's Joe
and get any information they need
and have a great wonderful interaction
and when they're ready to go pick up that car
they're going to meet Bill instead of Joe
and be like Joe is amazing
he was just a great person
and not no they were talking the entire time to a robot
and I see that all the time in drive centric
like they're talking as if they knew this human
and it's like there wasn't a human
you mentioned something important there
you said you can't have all these bolt-ons
the big trend in the business has been
hey we have all this software
let's try to centralize Consolidate
is drive centric not for the dealer
that wants to use X conversational AI
you know Y conversational voice
or like is that are you not the platform
for that type of dealer
or how do you think about integrations in general
because every dealer wants to simplify their workflow
and it's a big reason why we've seen a big
shift in our industry
to just more centralized experiences
selfishly as a CEO drive centric
I'd like everybody use drive centric
and then as their customer engagement platform
but realistically that's impossible
so let me answer how we're addressing the people
that want to use whatever ABC company bolt-on
that they want to use in a minute
but first just on the drive centric side of things
we're not yet fully in service in F9
by the end of the calendar year
we will be fully in both of those categories
to do a handoff
because I think there's a lot of leakage
and a lot of bad customer experience
going from sales to the desking tower
to FNI office to the cashier
why why can't that just be a seamless process
and a seamless handoff
we don't have integrated system
I use Darwin over here
and I use you know some desking system
over there and I use this over here
it's just a fragmented system
I think we can solve that by saying
you're just flowing a customer record through
and you're dealing with a handoff
between one department to another
and in between you have leakage
that's why there's all these tools
that have prung up on service of sales
or vehicle acquisition
because between the service department
and the sales department there was leakage
so you have all these bolt-ons
because of the leakage
make it one platform to manage this
and close that leakage
I think drive centric is going to lead the race there
but because there's embedded other products
a voice agent over here
I have my telephony over here
I have my AI widget over here
we created the partner hub
and our partner hub grows by dozens
every single week
we get 30 40 requests a day
coming into the partner hub
to integrate drive centric to ABC widget
I realized when I came in as CO drive centric
is it has to be more open
where we have the API connect
if you're going to connect
and we connect with people
that we would consider in the industry
direct competitors
but dealer's choice
most of it is your data
and if you really want to use that system
and it is duplicate of what we do
then that's okay
as long as the data flows back
into one centralized customer card
so we can manage
and ensure the customer data
is all centralized in one place
you can use whatever tool you want
and we find the most success
with dealerships that
try out all the different things
and then say eventually
can I turn other things off
awesome yes
but we made a conscious decision
that no we can't be
you know a conglomerate
that views the world
like traditional apple
you got to be in the apple
and ecosystem
and every single device
and everything in your household
has to be apple
I don't believe in that world
and I also don't believe in the world
that apple
you know
I don't want I don't want the green
text bubbles
I don't I'm just being honest
I'm just being honest
if I'm in the blue chat
but what's funny is like
you were way back when
when Steve Jobs got on
you know the the screen
with Bill Gates behind him
if you were like oh
what's this you know
Microsoft and Apple getting together
yeah
then recently
Apple just announced
they're dropping their AI
and they're going to Gemini
which is Google
and it's like
that is a good world
that's a world I support
which is
hey
you know if it's better
use it integrate it
and
but right now
dealers for whatever reason
are stuck into certain tools
and processes
and I won't win every battle
so great
we'll integrate it
if we need
needless to say
they should have won the AI battle
with you know
just all their capital
under their modes
but that's right
that's a that's a story
for another day
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chat groups is now open
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notes
I'll see you inside
let's make sure we pull up
some objections
to keep this fair
for the audience
there's really just
one thing I saw
and
I'll reserve my own opinion on this
until
I let you speak
the only thing I
that came up
in terms of objections with DriveCentric
was price
some people said you're too expensive
I'm sure you've
you hear this in private conversations too
how do you respond to that
if someone says DriveCentric is too expensive
I did a
a lot of research before I came on board
and there were three main
feedbacks I was getting
and so
probably number two and three was
closed off
didn't integrate well
hopefully we're getting that
changed in the ecosystem
which is why I asked you about the integration by the way
and then
you know the third one was reporting weaknesses
and I hopefully we've closed
a lot of those too
because we rolled out
genius reporting
which is natural language
way to do reporting
but
more work to be done
in both those categories
and I acknowledge that
and I think we're going to have
a tremendously forward
in the way we think about reporting
I think we have a tremendously forward
in the way that we think about
how we handle
you know integrations
because we're integrating to
anybody that
dealers are asking us to integrate with
as fast as we can
there's realistic of how fast
we're going to agree with everybody right
there's there's too many
the influx of them
but on price
an age old problem is
you know I could give one answer
which is you get what you pay for
you know value is value
but in this world of dealerships
with margin pressure
and this world of dealerships with
sort of difficulties with justifying
a line item
that's the most expensive on their P&L
the way that I describe it to people
though is
look our core CRM
apples to apples to any other CRM out
there
is probably cheaper
and I put probably
a fairly good wager on
besides maybe
some that just sell into independence
or just sell into you know
specialty dealers
franchise dealer CRMs
the big four or five they're out there
our CRM pricing is no different
however
our CRM comes with
12 or 15 other features
that are bolt-ons
a video bolt-on you got for over here
an AI bolt-on that you got for over here
live room over here
the ability to have a portal
to exchange secure documents
over here with this widget
and when you consolidate all that tech stack
you're saving money
and we have tons of testimonials out there
of dealerships saying
when I truly step back and said
what could I consolidate my tech stack on
not only am I getting better compliance
I'm getting more savings
and a better customer experience
so yes there's a
there's a perception in the market we're expensive
but I think it's because the CRM
is not apples to apples
it's the CRM plus ABCDEF
and it's only going to continue
but I do want to
ensure we're working on
kind of having three packages out there
in the marketplace
so we rolled out this year
kind of a concept of three packages
if you really really
for whatever reason
want to skinny down your package
and you want to turn off
all these great features
and get down to just a very basic
rudimentary CRM
that does some basic tasks and management
great we'll give you that package
some of a thousand dollars
but we see 99% of our dealerships say
and I actually really want this
and when I did the analysis
this made sense for me to do
but we do offer now
kind of three packages
just to kind of help squash that concept
that we're expensive
yeah
guess what when I was with mastermind
it was also really expensive
and it was a perception
it was expensive
but you know I think there is value
when you say hey
this is my customer
and managing engagement with my customer
has got to be the most important thing I do
let's put the money there
versus a back office system
an accounting system
you know something
it doesn't talk to customers
and we spend an absorbent amount over here
and not as much over here
and sometimes I always question
you know the logic of them
price is what you pay
value is what you get
so Matt a couple more questions here for you
but as you were speaking
I'm trying to think
okay you're doing well today
amazing
do you think you're well positioned
to continue winning
in the you know in these coming years
with all this change with AI
disrupting everything
of course you're leaning
in a big way into AI
right there's obviously
super well capitalized competitors
as I'm sure you are as well
but why are you well positioned
to continue winning
how do you think about that
tell my team all the time
there's three core pillars
I believe in
and we rolled this out
company-wide last year
but it's focused on the core
it's really important
we have to scale for growth
and we have to innovate for the future
break down those three pillars
the core
that's our support
that's our infrastructure
that's the core product
we have to keep innovating
for customers to show value
and value is in software world
constant features
and we rolled out 2,600 features in 2025
I think we might double that in 2026
you have to show value in the core
and you know we rolled out
we can support that
we didn't have fully coverage in
because now we have more dealerships
you know on different time zones
it's important
scaling for growth is
how do I scale this
to have enterprise views
across a dealer group
how do I have the ability to do
you know where I could launch
200 dealerships in a month
300 dealerships in a month
I have to scale the organization
to stay ahead of
you know where we're at
so I don't get a reputation of
you know backlog
bad customer support
you have to keep scaling the business
and then
innovation is probably our most important one
which is
we're in a dead race
I mean
the funnest time
I think I've been in software for 25 years
is the last 18 months
and it's not
just drive-centric
it is the speed of which
new technology is coming
mind boggling to me
but an exciting time
so the innovation race
the beauty of drive-centric is
we can move at lightning speed
and we're a big company now
but yet we're not tethered by
big company problems
and big company problems
typically are red tape
and typically sort of
you know bureaucracy
that kind of slows down innovation
and in drive-centric
we're like hey
we're going to roll out an agent
every 60 to 90 days
and hey in drive-centric
we're going to have
different things with
the pace of which
these large language models are coming out
you know
we test out all sorts of different ones
and we say
voice wasn't there
for us
our quality
a year ago
but there were a thousand voice agents
that came out to market
now all of a sudden
it's pretty good quality
okay we have a voice agent now
and embedded natively into drive-centric
but there's still some gaps
that have to close
to make that customer experience
so good
what's the handoff back to a human
if you need to
is that transcript
truly in the customer card
and that pace of the innovation
to be able to close those gaps
to be able to give out to our customers
a quality product
but at a pace
that they can absorb
and our sales
and our commercial
marketing team can absorb
is my number one challenge
as CEO right now
is it's
we are way ahead on product
then I think the industry can absorb
and getting the message out
getting them to understand
getting them to adopt these tools
is
is a cool challenge to have right now
do you see that shifting
like do you see AI adoption
accelerating
amongst dealers
or
what's your
what's your pulse on that
it went slow at first
AI adoption was
hey it's this little flashy widget
that's cool
and then it was
hey this is helping me
write my emails
and hey this is helping me
you know follow up on things
that I forgot to do
and AI started to come
more into our consumer life
and it was a little bit of a lager
in the professional life
and then all of a sudden people were
like hey I like these cool little
toys these widgets
these bolt-ons
a voice agent for reception
a service scheduling over here
you know a
a sales agent over here
and then all I think it kind of
started to come back down
because people are like
this wasn't the experience
I was hoping for
I didn't get the ROI here
it's missing stuff
it's not centralized
too many different voices
and so I do think it's
patot if not slowed down a little bit
I think what's happening though
at the pace of what's happening
at these macro large language
companies that are out there
and the pace of which verticalized
software companies can
move this out in a
integrated way
I do think it's going to pick back up
really quickly here
yeah and again it's
the fear of
that's my assessment as well by the way
based on all the inbound we get
and the questions and the interest
and just the feedback
you could tell that
not everyone but
the smart dealers don't want to fall behind
so they're
you know
they're spending a lot of time
and doing a lot of homework and research
you don't have to be first to market
in some of these little
you know flashy items
but if you could look for a platform
that kind of says
where are you going
what's all going to be included in this
was your 12 month road map look like
and have conviction in that company
that they can deliver that
I think we have a pretty good track record
and drive centric of saying
here's where we're going to be going
here's what we're going to go do
if I can
paint a picture of where I think we can consolidate
you don't have to rush into every little area
and say I need a bolt on here
I need a bolt on there
if you can put it all into one platform
one voice
you have such a better customer experience
and so
if you've been on drive centric
seven eight nine years
it's probably worth going back to your pot
and saying
hey
refresh me on what's new
because I might not even be using it
and that's like
one of the industry challenges
to get stuck into a routine
this is how I do things
but technology is there to constantly enhance
how you do things
and
the pace of this sort of new world
is really exciting
but you as an end user of the platform
have some responsibility to say
I got to know what's the latest and greatest thing
in case I'm starting to fall behind
because I'm stuck doing same thing
I've been doing for two or three years
in my system
and that system might have evolved a lot
and not always does that come with a cost
it might just be a core feature
or an added benefit
that was rolled out
you just weren't aware of
well Matt
you're doing some incredible work
for the industry
and for the customer experience
which
you know we so badly need to
continue improving that
and especially in today's day and age
with all this pressure
from different forms of mobility
so
hoodos to you and to the team
and as we wrap up
leave our audience with one piece of advice
or
Matt Leone word of wisdom
what do you have for us
the word of wisdom
especially for people that think about
the systems and technologies
is this really serving my customer
is this making my customer experience better
and I think often we think
is that technology going to make my job easier
is it going to eliminate a task
or do something better for me
and I think our fundamental belief
in DriveCentric is
if we can make the customer experience better
then it's a home run
and just challenge the industry
to start thinking about that
differently that your platform of choice
got to be the one focused on your customer
and the technology powering that has to be one
that's focused on that customer engagement
so
so one bit of advice I think I always share with people
is that
change that mindset
Matt Leone CEO at DriveCentric Matt
thank you so much for coming on the path
all right
hope you enjoyed that episode
please give the podcast a rating
consider subscribing to the show
and check the show notes
for links to what we talked about
thanks for tuning in
I'll see you guys next time
About this episode
Matt Leone, CEO of DriveCentric, argues that dealership CRMs haven’t evolved since the task/workflow era and now suffer from tech bloat and fragmented “bolt-ons.” He explains why CRM should be a true customer engagement source system for every role that touches shoppers—not just sales—so there’s one consistent “voice” and faster real-time responses. DriveCentric’s approach centers on mobile-first UX, engagement-focused dashboards (not task grinding), native video, and AI “Genius” plus performance coaching (“Drive Score”). He also addresses integrations, pricing perceptions, and how AI agents should augment humans rather than replace the human handoff.
Today I'm joined by Matt Leone, CEO of DriveCentric.
Matt breaks down why "tech bloat" is killing dealership margins and how shifting from task management to real-time engagement hubs can stop lead leakage across Sales, F&I, and Service.
We also dive into the future of AI agents and why your next "employee" might actually be a machine-learning model.
This episode is brought to you by:
1. Lotlinx – Meet LotGPT, your AI Inventory Strategist built exclusively for car dealers. It reveals competitive insights, shopper behavior, and pricing dynamics, and even identifies underperforming VDPs with merchandising recommendations to boost conversion without cutting prices. Put LotGPT to work for your dealership today, totally free, @ here.
2. CDG Circles – A digital peer group for top auto dealers. Private dealer chats. Vendor reviews. Real insights — confidential, compliant, no travel required. Join dealers representing 3,000+ rooftops @ here.
3. DriveCentric – DriveCentric puts dealerships in the Fast Lane to the Customer with a modern engagement platform built to move faster, connect teams, and keep every customer moving forward. Visit @ here to learn more
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Topics:
02:40 The Bill That Could Ban Chinese Cars.
05:10 Why Australian Dealers Make Zero On New Cars.
07:10 The Threat Destroying Blue Sky Values.
09:25 Why Toyota Stores Trade For 15X Earnings.
12:50 Why US Trucks Are Safer Than China.
18:10 Dealer Profits Still Double Pre-COVID.
21:50 The One Brand Where Bargains Are Appearing.
24:45 The Smart Lever When New Car Gross Drops.
26:40 Why Salespeople Can't Afford The Cars They Sell.
30:50 The Mercedes Turnaround That Made It Hot Again.
45:55 Infiniti Stores Selling For Zero Blue Sky.
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