Jenna Karam joins the Car Guy Coffee Podcast to discuss her role at Drive Centric and the unique culture of the company. The conversation highlights the importance of building relationships in the automotive industry, the innovative features of Drive Centric's CRM, and how their events foster community and learning among dealers. Jenna shares insights on creating a supportive work environment, the significance of personalized customer engagement, and the benefits of using technology to enhance communication. The episode is filled with humor and practical advice for automotive professionals.
Topics:company culturecustomer engagementCRM featuresdealer eventspersonalized servicetechnology in communicationsupportive work environment
Welcome to the #DC20 Interbrew Series recorded during our our time at DriveCentric’s Headquarters during their DC2023 Event in St. Louis. This is series is packed with Dealers, Vendors, and Voices in our incredible industry that are committed to seeing the Upshift and Uplift that we are committed to brewing about! Featured in this episode is Jenna Karam, Sales Coordinator at DriveCentric, she’s putting the Relationship into CRM! Enjoy, Let’s Brew!
"...n the Car Guy Coffee podcast. We're here at Drive Century Headquarters in incredible Saint Louis, Missouri,..."
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Hello, and welcome to the Car Guy Coffee Podcast. This inner brew and
Drive Centrics DC twenty has been brought to you by our friends and partners at MXS Solutions, Fixed Ops, Digital and one Data and Analytics, three two one Ignisitions, Shop Smart Autos and NUE. If you want more bruised or
you want to find out how to partner with the Car Guy Coffee Podcast, go to Car Guy Coffee dot com. Let's brew what's going on, car
Guys and car Galsan's lumires the Car Guy And this is Brolin, our subprime hero and we are brewing solutions on the Car Guy Coffee Podcast. And we
are here with the one, the only, Jena Kim. That's right,
So you know what's going on over here. We are excited that you are
here in folks. You know the deal and there's so many people that are
part of an incredible company going down. There's always that run person that's behind
this string. She's the one that's got everything moving and grooved. And I
can't believe that we actually got you the quarter. She's over here hiding with
the seriously like when he mentioned, hey, let's get ross, like I wonder have her I see her everywhere, so we got to find the right moment, and this is that right moment. So we're so glad that you
got to jump in good. I also want to thank you. Since day
one this event was even brought to our attention, you've been nothing but helping us, trying to get into where we can get here and participate and have fun. And then any information I needed, whether it be schedules, email
addresses, hotel information, you were always so quick with the information and so willing to help. So I want to thank you for all that blessing that
they have her here and Drive Centric. Seriously, y'all, I'm not gonna
say she needs to raise but I'm gonna say is what I'm gonna say, and I don't think I think that's the needless to say. But at the
end of the day, what I'm saying is that you have a great employee that cares about y'all's business and Drive Centric. You're very blessed to have her
because she represents your brands so well, so let's keep it going. Great
job, it's so nice. I wasn't prepared for that, and we weren't
prepared for how awesome this place was. We were talking, we heard a
couple of things and then we saw a pick a ball and then we saw a pool tis and pinball machine all that stuff. What is it like working
in an environment like that? We have crazy days and we have awesome days.
We don't have bad days, which is so nice. Every once in
a while we'll hire a new employee who's like younger, straight out of college, like ready to work. But I don't think they've ever witnessed what like
the real world is like. Sometimes if they're having a bad day, we're
like, no, this is nothing, like this is great. A bad
day at drive Centric is a good day day, and try Centric is actually a great day. It is, But I could tell I think that for
when there's a lot of support here. I think everybody has each other's back,
and that's something that's very important. But the way that they do have
the culture here, it's not just the building. It's not just because you
guys have all these cool things to do. It's it's so cool that makes
get a lot. Can you imagine how hard it would be for somebody that
never had any end job before comes here see all that stuff, and then they go to someplace else and be like can you give me yeah, Like, yeah, you guys, really, how do you how do you guys break a sweat while you're at work? We have a regular coffee. Ah,
what are you talking about? We got an airport quality coffee machines open.
They got the airport lounge coffee makers here. Ok, this is bigger
than an airport some airports that we've been in. This feels like a much
bigger wing than than what we've seen. It's hands free. I don't even
know airports where you could just wave your hand by the door. By this
little thing. Door opens, you walk in, use the restaurant, come
out, wash your hands. You got soap. Then you also have the
automatic water and air dryers right there. Und anything to see, all on
one. They've got all three touch. And then if you still want to
use paper, they got paper there for you two. It's no problem.
And then as you leave once again, you wave and you're right out.
No touch. Don't let me get started on the days. I don't know.
Just getting funny story. Steve Wants asked me what type of toilet paper
the girl's room gets. Oh wow, because you guys get better toilet paper
than we do. And I'm like, no, they're all the same.
No, no discrimination here. Well, opportunity for the toilet paper, everyone
gets opportunity. Hey, Dealers, car Guy, Coffee podcast, and certified
Solutionaries are honored to be part of TEA Thank You. The solutions they've been
ruined for you to acquire more vehicles, advertise merchandise, and manage those vehicles has made them one of the most sought after dealer partners in the market.
They are one percent CEGC improved and when you visit them at Vinci dot com you'll see a whole hill of beans where the reasons why TEA thank you, let's prove. But speaking of equal opportunity, there's a lot of people that
are here from all different walks of life inside of the dealership work. Whether
that's Internet sales managers to owners, the general managers to the sales managers, all of them are here. How is it that you help or what is
it that you really focus on? And trying to rate an event where everybody
feels as though they got something. Yes, I don't know if you guys
know this, but DC twenty doesn't stand for DC twenty twenty three. It
stands for DC twenty group. Yes, the whole purpose behind DC twenty was
to bring dealers together, and in the beginning we didn't think that dealers would want to come back more than once. But the way that things played out
and evolved with this event after our first one, everyone was like, this has to be a yearly thing. It has to be annual. We want
to come back and learn from new dealers and take this back to our dealership.
A lot of the time they say that the CRM is like the core of your dealership. It's a big part of what you do at the dealership,
And so I'd say, why wouldn't you put as much importance on training on that core then you would anything else. Why would you just buy a
product and then give up. Why wouldn't you want to come to an event
like this. Digital Dealer Nada is great. You learn a lot from those
events, but they miss that personal touch of being able to network with each other, of being able to meet these people and come back, And that's what we wanted to do. That's what we wanted to bring our dealers at
DC twenty. It's also for the most part, it's our current customers.
We do invite non customers people who are like on the brisks of becoming a drive center customer, because we want them to get a piece of the culture before they're actually part of the culture. But I can tell you this,
every non customer who's come to DC twenty and the signing yes, that's a that's very good. You gotta get them on the lot, folks, you
gotta get them out here. And this is what's awesome about the exposure that
you're giving to dealers concerning this one too, because they are unified around one tool. And that's what's different about this than any other type of an event.
Like when we go to a convention, there's it's tool city. They're
out here looking at all the technologies, all the options to upgrade, change and do stuff. But here it's you're faceted around, Hey, we all
use this tool, how do you use it more effective? How am I
not using it effective enough? And how can we get better? I'm sure
that there's plenty that you all have learned from the dealers interacting with it, saying hey, did you know that this can actually do this where we can flip it and do that, And you're like, yeah, we knew that.
Tell us more That's actually pretty much how our first event went down.
We started at Digital Dealer, where we give like snippets, and then I was like, all right, I'll do my research at Digital Dealer. I'll
do my research at NADA with our dealers, and I'll see what the trending topics are and I'll bring them into our own. It's really fun. I
love it. Every dealer I've worked with to build this event has been super
positive, super helpful, and I've learned new things because of it too.
Can't can't. That's awesome. I gotta tell you, these dealers here are
so open and receptive you guys. The thing is you attract what you put
out right, and you guys put out you putting out this energy of growth, opportunity and love. That's the kind of dealers are coming here. Those
are type of deals signing up with you because they want the same thing for not just themselves, but for their people and for their customers that walk in the doors. So what you all are doing is representative business extremely well.
You guys are top notch. I'm telling you right now, drive centric with
your CRM. I don't recommend any other CRM. I will tell people to
look at other ones if they want to, but I recommend drive Centric, always have since the day, and honestly it's because of the people. More
and then when I learned the product, I was like, oh God, now I put a stand on it. Really anything else. I absolutely love
the way it looks, the way it feels, the way my clients talk about the product and how they're utilizing it. It's the best. Hey,
dealers, franchise and independent, we have some great news for you and your number one sales pro, your website partner. With Team mx SSS, we
have the ability to pull you out of that cookie cutter to marry go around and help your website and body what it means to do business from the highest quality production to the most strategic optimization. We want to help you connect better
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can't wait to hear from you. Go to team ms dot com. Back
to the show, Yeah, I agree. The other big part about DC
twenty that stands out from other events is that we don't invite just anyone like we love all of our customers, and we do want to give them all a chance eventually, but even our invite process is personalized, so we actually ask our customer service team who they would like to see come first, and that's our first round of invites. Interesting, So that doesn't necessarily mean they
have to be a good customer, but we keep in contact with our customers.
We're not one of those CRMs where you sign up and then you get launched, you get going, and then eventually you no longer need us.
Yeah. No, we are one of those CRMs where you're like, welcome
to the family. We'll see you at the family reunion. Whether it be
a year from now and there'll be six months from now. You're part of
the game, no doubt. And I know this because one of the biggest
things that people say about your all support staff is that when they have any type of vision, doesn't matter what it is, the support is quick.
It's instant. If you guys are open, it's going to happen that day.
It's very that anything lingers and only if it's something that needs time to get the code written right away. One thing I do love is that you
guys will custom things for customer for your customers too. You will make sure
that their CRM works for them, right, And it's important you guys have a very good base of your CRM. But yet you guys all still have
people up there willing to work with them make sure that they're getting the right numbers that they want to see, that they're getting they're getting their information pushed to the places that they were pushed. So I think that's phenomenal with you
all. Be seriously, Yeah, that's like the whole point behind Carlos presentation.
Like he has special filters set up for him because that's the way that works best for his store. People Like we train on that, but not
everybody has those filters. Would we be willing to set it up for them
in a heartbeat. But yeah, it's really cool to see the things that
technology can do and the things that we can do for people with technology.
And that's literally the middle name of what you're providing, right. You are
drive centric the CRM. Your relationship is your middle name. Customer Relationship management
system. Folks, Exactly what we want to do is build relationships with our
customers, build relationships with our communities. They are doing exactly that, and
no wonder why a product like this inside of your dealership is the heartbeat.
If you don't know how to have these relationships cultivated in the way that lead to the solution that you are being trusted to provide, then everything falls apart.
And what I love about drive centric is how you can isolate things.
What Castillo was going all, he was doing so good, and he highlighted a few things that were key of It's about those tasks that everybody hates, those tasks that some people don't really do it, just don't complete them all the time. People don't even care of right, and they're going to keep
talking about you get fakes happening, But to prioritize the who you want to talk to and when. And we just were in another state just last week,
and we're talking about, hey, let's restructure who's talking to the customer and exactly the flow of we want to talk to customers that have been inside of the system for this shorter time, We want our salespeople talking to them, and then we want to make sure that our BBC crew is talking to these people here being able to shift that instead of trying to just stick to the mold that we've been shown or the computer just telling us all these tasks and we're not really doing them. We're not engaging them with them, right.
That's not building relationships, folks. And that's why it's awesome to be
but a half a tool like drive Centric. They can help you target the
exact customers that you want to work with on your flow, but also the bigger part, folks, because they solve a problem that most people don't even recognize that they have. It's being able to communicate with the customer by way
of video. We know you're doing the show so far. We just wanted
to quickly remind you about our partners at Big Stops Digital and how they are automotives premier service marketing and technology company not only crowd sponsors of the Car Guy Copy podcasts, but they also serve as your indicated point of contact for all your online service marketing related needs servicing dealerships throughout the US and Canada. The
mission is to create a better online experience for your service customers while using data intelligence to drive more fixed operations revenue. If you want to take your service
marketing efforts to the next level, go to fix Ops Digital dot com.
Back to the show, let's go tell us a little bit more about what it is that drive Centric does to be able to help make that video of interaction easier and not so bogged down on memory and files and all that.
How does drive Centric help make sending videos easier? For sure? So we
basically package our product as an engagement hub. But the thing that makes drive
Centric stand out from other CRMs is that we promote the engagement hub over the CRM. We'll throw in the CRM for free. The engagement hub is what's
important here. You want to be taking those videos. You want to be
texting your customers, you want to be emailed, You want to be communicating with however the customer wants to communicate with you. Are you going to email
me if I'm not responding back to you, or should you text me?
And if I respond back to you when you want to text me back, you're going to follow their form of communication. Okay, there are people out
there who still email. There are people out there who prefer texting. There
are people out here out there, like literally right outside of the store, Steve, he will jip you and send you videos until the day you die.
This man has sent me some weird these weird jip things and I'm like, I don't know how I feel about that. What does that even mean?
Exactly? He makes stickers of himself. There are different forms of communications.
That is technology of today, and it's only going to get worse from here on out. There's only going to be more and more ways of communicating.
And so the thing about draft Centric is that we make it easier for you to do that. We have with one threat of communication. You can
text, you can call, you can email, you can send video, all from one platform, all from one threat. So imagine the way that
I like to think about it is like, imagine I booked a flight and I wanted to send the flight information to my parents, but I didn't want to send it by email. I just wanted everything to be in one place.
I don't want to have to go back into my email find where the flight information was and then pull that information and then send it in a text, all because my mom wanted it on her cell phone. Good question.
Do you know what smart pixel, two point zero, location, IQ and audience i Q haven't common? You know? I do? They are solutions
that our friends and proud sponsors and one data and analytics are brewing for automotive once again, you're right, my friend, and we want to invite all of our audience to go to m one hidata dot com to see how they can help propel your business forward with the right data insight. Go check them
out at m one dot com. Let's brew. Come on now, back
to the show. I just want everything in one place. I want my
emails in one place. I want my text messages in one place. I
want to see that I called my mom today in the same place. It's
all in my one thread of communication done in one place, one place, one shop, one stop that said you get it done. And that's what
a CRM should feel like. You know. It's when at the end of
the day, when you're a salesperson, you're BDC member, whoever's using those that actual CRM, they need to sit there and be able to say, I've killed it today. I knocked it out right and look at all this
and then what's even cooler is that even the leadership can look at and say, man, Bobby killed it today. He knocked it out. Can go
cheer him and say, hey, today Bobby cleared all this task at all this sent out videos, had this many contacts. Let's go set so many
appointments. That's what's so important. What's so great about this. It's an
accountability tool that's fun and interactive, that's different, that speaks to your customers where they want to be spoken to and how they want to be spoken by, whether it be video gifts, whatever you want to call them, all these things. I think that those are important to do, and I think
they are fun and creative, and I think that people do respond to that way more than a robotic text, a robotic message, a robotic email.
Be different, being her used to be different and be encouraged to try things that will help your business grow instead of keeping it the same because it's what you've been doing so big. Well, I used to go to this gym
where the logo or the slogan was trained insane or remain the same. That's
wrongs. Insane or remain the same. That's all I'm saying. It's a
great change change. Heck yeah, Well, on that note, we know
that your time is very precious and I'm sure that drop Okay, what's happening, No, I'm just like going, so we're gonna go ahead and drop some f bombs. We're gonna go ahead and forgive. We're gonna focus,
and we're gonna fly so that we can keep growing. So go ahead and
put your hands on your shoulders and let's forgive, focus, fly on three, one two, three, forgive, and keep probing, keep growing.
Thank you so much for having some fun with us now or a solutionary.
I am living here as the Car Guy and I'm Brolin Art subprime hero and you've been brewing solutions on the Car Guy Coffee podcast. We're here at Drive
Century Headquarters in incredible Saint Louis, Missouri, and we are having fun ruined solutions with the one, the only Jenna caral that's right that point. Thank
you so much. We still got more to Bruce.
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