"Dealers Are Chasing Leads Too Late!" – Why Predicting Buyers Is the Next Dealer Edge | Mo Zahabi, AVP of Product Consulting at Cox Automotive

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But the efficiency side of that is,

I'm wasting not only me power on that,

but I'm also probably wasting a lot of marketing dollars

at the same time.

So I think the dealers are, you know,

always going to look at the, you know,

marching compression as the big problem.

Today I'm joined by Moe Zahabi,

AVP of product consulting at Cox Automotive.

Most dealerships think the clock starts

when a lead comes in,

but in reality that customer has often been shopping

for five or six weeks already.

Moe breaks down how first party data

from across the Cox ecosystem

can help dealers identify buyers earlier,

eliminate wasted effort caused by bad data

and fragmented tools,

and create a more efficient sales process

that keeps the salesperson with the customer

instead of chasing paperwork.

A big thank you to our sponsors

for making this episode possible.

Podium, busy car.

And of course, Cox Automotive.

And now let's get into the show.

Moe Zahabi on to CDG Podcast, Moe, welcome.

Thanks, Yoshi.

I really appreciate you having me on the show

and looking forward to this little bit

of anxiousness going on, but...

Sorry.

I'd like to be here.

Oh, no, no, just a fun conversation.

With a little, some guest input,

of course we had to send some questions in circles

and ask dealers what questions do they have

for been solutions and other or yourself,

of course, running and leading

lots of product direction at Cox Auto,

which is influencing thousands of dealers nationwide

and inevitably tens of thousands of customers,

if not more.

It's a pretty big responsibility, huh?

Well, I have a question for you here, though.

Well, let's kick it off.

You were, you're part of this, I call it,

a pretty tiny club within Automotive

that has tech background and real dealership experience.

There's some of these people, not too many.

It's an interesting two worlds to kind of bridge.

You were 10 years at a dealership

and you ran into someone on the lot.

I thought this was kind of like a Hollywood story,

so I thought I'd ask you first.

That person ended up being the founder of Vin Solutions.

So you actually interacted with them on a dealership lot,

roughly, let's say, what, 15, 20 years ago?

Pretty incredible.

Tell us about that story.

How did this happen?

Yeah, it was back in 2000, I think, seven.

And I was, like I said, my background, technical.

I was that nerdy guy in the lot.

I had fired dealer specialties.

The dealership that I was working at

may make their a little bit rude.

So they said, well, if you think you can do it,

you go do it yourself.

So I fire these guys and they leave.

And I'm not kidding, it's maybe 15, 20 minutes later,

this little kid walks up and I think Matt was like 19

at the time, jean shorts and a t-shirt.

And he goes, hey, you got to check this out.

And I'm like, are you kidding me?

Well, we talk a little bit, some good conversation.

Same backgrounds, nerdy guys, computer science.

But Matt really had a good solution.

And it really created a partnership

that ultimately pulled me out of dealership.

So then it's incredible, right?

He literally found you at the dealership.

Give us the story.

Why did you decide to do this?

You've been at with Vin or with Cox on a mode of nerve,

but you started with Vin and it's been almost two decades.

Why did you feel at the time,

before we talk about present day and what's coming,

why did you feel compelled to leave the dealership

and go to the tech side?

It was funny because I was going to go run

another software company called Perceptive Software.

I had a friend who was VP there

and he was trying to pull me back

out of the automotive industry.

I had a one year old son, so this was really hard.

But when I let them know I was going to leave,

I called back to, Vin's solution said,

hey, Matt, it's been great,

wanted to let you know we had a really good partnership.

If there's anything I can do to help you in the future,

let me know.

He put me on the phone with Mike Delay,

who is our chief sales officer at the time,

who hired me on the spot.

So the big reasoning behind it, Yosi,

was it was from my kid.

I didn't want to put in the hours that I was putting in

with a one year old and have him grow up not knowing me.

So it was a big leap.

My dad thought I was absolutely crazy

because of positioning that I have myself in

with the dealer group that I was working for.

But he did help me, did support me,

and it turned out to be an excellent opportunity.

And the funny part was Chase Abbott and I

actually worked across the street from each other,

and we met in finance school.

So we knew each other and we started two days apart,

and I tried to hire him to work at the dealer group

I was as an F&I guy.

And when he saw me, he was really mad

because I almost got him to quit his job

to come work for me and I quit my job to go work there.

So it all worked out,

but it was kind of a weird story and how it came together.

Okay, so you meet the founder of Insolutions

that you eventually join and you go to the tech side.

Talk to me about what learnings did you bring over

from your time as a dealer to the tech and product side?

You know, Matt and I had talked a lot before I came over there

and there were some things that we did to help gather data

out of the dealership that made it a little bit easier on him

because of my technical background,

I could explain things that he was trying to learn about

inside the dealership because when I came on board,

they only did window stickers.

And then they introduced the ILM,

the internet lead management tool,

which we tested for a while,

but ultimately we didn't create the CRM or desking

until I started at bin.

And that's a lot of what I was able to take in there.

And unfortunately there was several people

who came out of automotive as well,

but on the technical side,

I was the only one with automotive experience,

but it helped me relate things to math

and obviously my delay at the same time.

But the things that I was able to bring were really

the understanding of how these different systems

that were out there today worked.

Like I can build reports in Reynolds and Reynolds,

I can build reports in CDK.

I know that I memorized all the keystrokes for Reynolds.

So desking and things and being able to push desking

in there was because I memorized the keystrokes.

We did the same with the actual ADP desk and tool as well.

So that's kind of some of what I did there at the beginning.

When I first started, there wasn't a lot of process

either in place.

And that was one of the things that we focused on heavily

was not just bringing customers on board,

but making onboarding better for those customers

because that's a big component of their happiness

and the long run.

So a lot of different areas like that,

I've kind of worked in all different parts of the company

from operations to product, so on and so forth.

You know, what I like about this type of wiring

is that you can see both worlds

and ideally translate problems to real solutions.

Now, I wanna fast forward us to present day

because there's dealers listening

and there's real challenges in the industry

and we're also going through lots of changes in industry,

just technologically as everyone is.

Given your wiring and having been on the dealer side,

Colonel and TechSide, what are you seeing today

as some of the most pertinent challenges for dealers?

I think there's a couple different challenges.

One of them is, I mean, you still see a lot of employee

turnover in the dealership.

And I think that's a direct reflection of the technology.

There's challenges from obviously sourcing inventory,

the economy, the way that's playing out right now.

I think the biggest issue that the dealerships are having

is efficiency.

I think they waste a lot of times

in a lot of different areas.

Trying to pursue customers

and not really chasing them down the right way.

You know, they rely on the old tactics more or less,

you'll see which is, hey, happy 15 month birthday

on your car as a way to engage with the customer

and gauge where they are in their life cycle.

And I think for salespeople, one, that's demoralizing

because there is no win there for them.

And I think for the customer, it's annoying.

But the efficiency side of that is I'm wasting

not only manpower on that, but I'm also probably wasting

a lot of marketing dollars at the same time.

So I think the dealers are always gonna look at the,

you know, margin compression as the big problem.

But I think that the problem is that most dealers

don't really have a pulse on who their customer is

or for where they are in their life cycle.

And I think that creates a big problem for them.

You said two big things there.

First, you started with technological challenges,

impacting turnover, which I wanna understand what you mean.

But let's start with efficiency.

When you say trying to pursue customers

and not going after them the right way,

what is the right way, right?

In your opinion, like how do you,

what's the right way today to interact with customers?

You have tons of resources under your belt, that's obvious.

And so I have to imagine you're spending those resources,

investing them in ways to help dealers solve these problems.

So that's really what I wanna get to.

But talk to me first about what is the,

like when you're saying chasing customers

on the wrong way, what is the right way?

Well, I think the right way is reaching out to a customer

before they reach out to you

and understanding why you reach out to them.

I think the big problem that we have right now

is dealers wait until they get a lead

and then they hurry and they rush

and they worry about a five minute response time.

Your customer's been in market for five to six weeks,

you're late, you're late to the game.

And I think that's a big problem for these dealers.

And what happens with that is you lose customers

because you never got the opportunity to sell them

because you were waiting for the lead.

I think that dealers need to really look at ways

to pull leads forward by understanding

what's going on with that customer.

And a lot of that can be picked up

and derived from first party data on websites,

being able to understand that a customer

has evaluated a trader, configured a dealer,

been on your website platform

and they are back in market and they are likely to buy.

The other side of that is, and you were there,

you know, buy my product.

If you buy my product, you'll make more money.

I always thought that was a horrible way to go about things.

I think that it's not just about profitability,

it is about efficiency.

And if you have efficiency in play,

you can save money for your dealership

and make it more impactful.

I think the dealers today who use data the right way

are making an impact and probably have happier customers

and happier salespeople.

An example of that would be, you know,

I remember calling and saying,

hey, Yossi, how are you doing?

You know that car you have, we really need that trade.

And then you'd go, oh, I got rid of that car

like six months ago, I actually traded it to you.

Well, we've sent you four marketing pieces since then

and my salesperson's called you three times.

Why does that keep happening?

Because you're not using data the right way

and pulling that data out of that pool

so we don't engage with that customer.

That's a lot of lost revenue, that's a lot of lost time.

And I think the dealers that are really hedging the data

are the ones that are in a better place now,

whether it's, you know, knowing the right time

to reach out to a customer or more importantly,

when not to reach out to a customer and waste your time.

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What are you doing to support that?

Like how do you fix that?

How do you help dealers fix that?

Well, I mean, we built processes in place for that.

So one of the ones that I love and it kind of gets undervalued

because it's a core component of our solution

but it's called no longer owns

and it automatically scrubs that out of the system.

So it says, oh, we'll use, you traded that car into us.

We can see it trains actually in the data.

Don't follow up, kill follow up process on that.

And then because of our pool of data auto trader,

specifically, you know, we see all those vehicles

out there listed online.

If we see that vehicle listed out online,

we know the customer doesn't own it anymore.

We kill the follow up process.

So putting it in perspective,

and we've had this process for a while

but I love this number because when we set

that process live across our system,

it killed 850,000 pending tasks in a day.

Think about that.

And what specifically, when you say,

was it just duplicative tasks that every dealer

who today is, let's say for example here is a,

you know, on a VinSolutions CRM hypothetically, right?

Is that what we're talking about that just disappeared

or what exactly happened?

That's pretty much what happened.

So it said, hey, listen,

these customers don't own these cars anymore.

There is no reason to call and say happy to your birthday

or, you know, offer them top dollar for their trade.

They don't own it.

So let's shift the follow up

and use that in a different way to engage

with the customer.

Because I mean, here's the thing,

is like if you trade in a car with me

and then I call and follow up and try to get you

to trade in the car, you already traded in,

how well do you think I know you as a customer?

So I want to bring up one question here

from a dominant Texas dealer

who's asking, this is real time from circles.

They're asking with the advent of AI

and so many, you know, new fast moving companies

and they are a, they're a VinSolutions dealer, by the way.

They're asking, how do you plan to invest in the platform

to keep your dominance in the months and year to come?

Can you give us an example of any of those plans?

Now, obviously this is a big question.

This isn't just like, hey, we're gonna do this

and everything's gonna be great.

This is clearly, you know, there's a lot

that goes into planning out the future.

But I think the bigger kind of thematic underlying question

here is, you know, what does the future look like for me

as a dealer who is maybe on VinSolutions or on this platform?

How am I going to stay competitive in the marketplace?

How do you respond to that?

I think that across the board, and it's not just CRM,

it's making the product smarter

and getting it to where data allows us to do more of it.

Because when we talk about AI, for example, AI is only

obviously as good as the data that you infuse it with.

So who has the largest pool of data who can see the most?

And that's really us.

And I love that fact because I'm here.

But I also know that, you know,

the dealerships themselves wanna be more efficient.

They wanna be able to do, I don't wanna say more with less

because I've been out and I've asked dealers this,

if you could do more with less, would you?

And they said, no, what I do is I just hire more people

and sell more cars because I've learned to be efficient.

And I love that.

And I've seen several of your interviews

where they talk about that efficiency angle.

I think that's more of where we're headed with this,

is more transparency, easier to use.

And obviously we've been knocked for UX, we haven't redesigned.

That's part of what's coming with it.

It's just making it more intuitive and more connected.

And I can tell you, when you take several companies

and you try to put them together,

it does take a while to get it right.

But because of the size and the depth and breadth

of what we have, the possibilities of what we can do

with that far exceed, I think, anybody else in the industry.

And it's just because of the scope of the data

and the people behind it.

And that's a big part of what we do.

You know, our performance management, for example,

that's something that I always wanted so badly

in dealership because I was the nerdy guy

that everybody called on to fix every,

like I was early AI before we had AI in the dealership.

I made everybody's life easier,

but it made my life more complicated.

Performance management tools like that,

I think really helped the dealers

get the most value out of the product.

Because if you don't have somebody there

to help you understand not only how to use it,

but ensure that you have metrics that show usage,

why buy the software?

I mean, why not just set the money on fire

in the back of the dealership and the winner

and keep it warm?

That's really what you do if you don't have

that type of system in place to make sure

that you're getting the most out of the decisions.

So I think one of the two things is data and people.

I want to, so I want to touch on the second one.

I'll bite, right?

I want to take it a step further because I agree with you.

I do think that in this age,

it's whoever has the most access to the most information,

you can simply, you know, get the smarter solutions.

But I wanted to distill that to the dealership level.

So you said make the product smarter and you're right,

you do have access, of course, to a plethora of data

because, you know, we'll talk soon,

we'll talk about what it means or, you know,

just to connect its solutions and, you know,

multiple logins, one login, you know,

disparate systems, we'll touch on that too.

But when you say make the product smarter,

can you give me some examples?

I know we had a side conversation before this

about like predictive analytics in the dealership

which I thought was neat, but can you give us, you know,

that could be one, but can you give us that

and other examples of, you know,

when you say make the product smarter, use the data,

how does that actually show up and, you know,

what does that actually look like in my day-to-day

in a dealership?

I mean, I think there's a lot of different areas you'll see.

I mean, you could have a website

and things like experience optimization

which is powered by our first party data

to make sure that the site's optimized for the customer.

I think that when I'm talking about inside the dealership,

you have, like I always said, you have a CRM.

There's a difference in a smart CRM and a dumb CRM.

A dumb CRM I log into and I got to figure out

what I'm supposed to do today.

A smart CRM can use data to highlight

probably the most important customer I could reach out to

and what I need to say and what happened in the past.

You know, give me a quick summary

of what we've done with this customer.

I think those are ways that we can make the experience better

and those are ways we're already doing it.

I think that the predictive side is huge

because it solves that problem that we talked about earlier

which was efficiency and knowing when to reach out

to a customer and what kind of offer to make to the customer

because when we rely on things like predictive analytics

versus predictive insights, we're relying on past data,

history to kind of re-piece together

what we might get in the future, right?

You know, so you always bought this car,

you're gonna buy this car because you always bought that car.

That's not always the case.

Things change, people have kids and they move on to SUVs.

Well, with our technology and how we're able to utilize it

and plug that in, I can see that behavior change

and I can recognize that, hey, wait a second,

this customer that's marked lost, for example,

we see that all the time or that previously sold customer

that we don't think's ready to buy again,

we're picking up those signals that they're back in market.

We can do things like automate lead creation

so we can use our network as a lead generation tool

inside the CRM and I think that's huge right there.

The other side of that is being able to automatically engage

based on situations and say, hey, because of that data,

we're able to acquire from tools like AutoTraderKBBDO.com,

My Wallet, Accelerate My Deal.

We know exactly how a customer wants to buy the car

and how to pencil that customer.

The other side of that is tools like, you know,

Deal Pulse and that's one of my favorite tools

and I know Chase is talking about.

What's that? What's that?

So Deal Pulse is a tool that's built

into our Deal Central application

and it's an aggregation of the data

the customer gave us in their journey.

So if they went to, let's say, AutoTrader

and they put preferences in or KBB

or they used My Wallet and told you what their range was,

we gather all that.

We gather from Accelerate My Deal as well

so if you get a customer and says I put 2,000 down

then I put 4,000, then I put five

and then I submitted it with three,

we know they have more money

and we're able to leverage that

so that if a customer does come in, the manager can see it

and it's, to me, it's like playing poker

with the customer's handspace of, you know,

I can see all those cards.

It's easier for me one to close a deal, right?

If I know what you really want, it's easier to close a deal.

It's also easier for me to call a bluff.

And then, I'm sorry, sometimes you gotta fold

and walk away from a customer, it just happens.

But I wanna know so I don't waste my whole day with them.

So being able to use that information

makes it a big advantage for the dealership.

The other side of that is more money

because if I'm a salesperson and you say,

hey, go get another couple of thousand dollars

out of that customer, most of the salespeople

I knew kinda coward at that point

because they didn't wanna mess up the deal

they already had in place.

So they would go talk to the customer,

come back to the tower and go, they didn't have more money.

But if I can show them that in the data,

this customer actually put down at one point,

they have more money.

You have the confidence now to go out

and ask the customer knowing that.

And I ask a lot of dealers this and they all say yes,

because it's the truth.

That confidence allows me to get more money

for the dealership, we know cash is king.

So I think there's a lot of different ways

that we can use those are a couple of examples

of how we're using it now.

Okay, so I get that from a data and analytics perspective.

I think you brought up a couple of astute points there

specifically with polls and deal polls

and actually having better information

for customer preferences and terms.

I wanna shift it now to the product itself.

One of the biggest pain points I experienced as a dealer

was having disparate systems.

And I think today it's even worse

because today the number of systems dealers are using

is simply at a record high and forget spend

but actual logins, it's just really difficult to manage.

So we've gotten to this point where,

I would say like some of the hottest

early stage startups in our industry are bolt-ons, right?

Because it is simply easier to grow and you can grow quicker.

And in theory, you don't have to take the dealer

out of their current workflow.

So I wanna start this conversation about just

what is your perspective on connecting?

I know you've had a big initiative on connecting

the Cox Automotive solutions,

but can you tell us like what stage is that at?

You know, one of the questions that someone wrote here

specifically was how are you working to continue improving

and evolving the integration of all the systems

at Cox Automotive?

And my guess, and I don't know this

because I didn't ask, but my guess is that they're asking

this because the more connected things are,

the more time I as a dealer save during my day

and things are just easier.

So what's your take on what's the current status

of integrations within your current product ecosystem

and where is it going?

Let's start with current status.

I think the current status is we're highly integrated.

I think some misperception comes from the fragmented UX.

It's like if you have an Apple,

you can use an iPad or an iPhone and a Mac,

they're all different operating systems by the way,

but they work the same, right?

Because they're a common platform.

And I think that's what we're trying to get to

is that common UX UI because I think it will solidify

a lot of the integration that we have.

I think we have like 180 different integrations

across the solutions right now.

In the future, there's obviously going to be more

and we're already working on that.

And I'm talking about like deep more on that.

This is something that we kind of beat up

our own product team about regularly

because that's part of my team's core job is

to take what the customer gives us

and give it back to them in a way

that they can understand it.

And probably 80% of the time,

it's like we need to change this workflow

to make it easier on our dealers.

And one of the key tools that we released,

and we didn't really push it as hard

as I thought we should,

we have a tool called Navigator

that actually works as a Chrome overlay

but works all of our products together.

So I could do like,

I'm in the service department at OC

and I go and I use this Navigator tool,

I can right-click a bin,

automatically see all the opens and declines on it.

I can push that right into viado,

all that information will carry over into viado

in real time, I can put a number on it

and then push it to bin to make an acquisition offer.

And it's just three or four clicks.

We wanted to simplify that

because we understand one, inventory, that's an issue.

But also that process and streamlining it

because to me, the best source of used car inventory

is your actual customer base.

And the best deal you have in your CRM right now

is one of your customers.

So why do we do all these other weird things?

And I think that's what we need to focus on

is what's best and what's the lowest hanging fruit.

And we have a lot of ways to do that

with the different integrations we have.

We've done that in the past, obviously,

with what we talked about predictive insights

because that harnesses auto trader KBB

and all those different sources

and brings them into one aggregate

where we can use it with engagement

for marketing for that matter.

But I think there's a lot of different opportunities for us.

I think service acquisition is obviously one of them.

The other one's gonna be streamlining processes

and downstream, streamlining the actual contracting

and financials side of a deal itself,

because let's face it, I work in dealerships.

Every one of the FNI managers is backed up, booked up.

And I think Chase talked about it like 40 minutes

of dealership time has spent idle.

I wanna make sure I can speed that up.

And I wanna also give the customer an opportunity

to do it a different way if they want to.

So if they wanna go about automated checkout,

let's do that and let them get out of the dealership

because if that makes us the same or maybe more money

because customers usually up pencil themselves,

I think it's gonna lead to a better customer satisfaction

experience as well, make it easier on the dealership

to do their job.

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So Mo, let's fast forward now.

We just came back from NADA.

There's a ton of announcements there.

What is, how are you allocating your time right now, right?

What's, from your perspective,

what's the most important to the dealer body

and how are you investing your time, you know,

within the organization to create new products,

new stands like what's next?

What can you tell us about that?

I think really what we're focused on is how do we,

I mean, I hate drowning the word data,

but how do we use the data?

How do we use our advantage to make the dealers better,

to make their jobs easier,

to make them more profitable at the same time,

to make them more efficient and save them time?

I think there's a lot of different tools

that we're working on to really assist the dealers

in these areas and at the same time,

not really disrupt their process too much.

Tools like AMD Elite with the ability to go ahead

and buy and check out online or tools like Deal Central,

which allow us to deliver a connected experience,

no matter where a customer or the dealer starts it,

we're able to pick up where they left off

with one continuous deal.

And I think that that instills a lot of trust

and transparency for the customer.

But to me, I think tools like Deal Central

really change not the process in the dealership,

but how we handle the process.

Because we always try to put these processes in place

and we have an internet process and a showroom process,

which I think is hilarious, because it's still the dealership.

I don't think it should be a different process.

But once a customer comes into the dealership, we change,

we go back, we revert to the way that it's always been.

Tools like Deal Central, I think,

really give us the ability to change that,

which it changes from that old school

belly-to-belly sales approach,

where we're kind of what duck billing is,

we're two baseball players,

they just keep hitting our hat on each other

and they're not really making any progress with each other.

The customer wants to feel like they're in control.

The dealer wants to feel like they're in control.

So really what we have to do is produce a situation

where the customer has illusion that they have control,

but the dealer really has it.

And I think that's what Deal Central's been able to do,

because we leverage the technology,

tools like Deal Pulse are built into it,

so we understand how to not only engage with the customer,

but how to counter a customer.

And then the technology allows us to solve a big problem

that we always had in dealership,

which is with today's customer,

I never want to leave them alone,

because they can get on their phone

and call another dealership or look on websites.

But fundamentally, I get a customer into a dealership,

I sit him down, I talk to him for two minutes,

and then what do I do?

I get up and I walk to the tower

and I keep the customer alone.

Deal Central allows us to pass that deal back and forth

in real time, whether the customer's there

in the dealership or at home is relevant,

we can move that deal back and forth.

So I think tools that help dealers

solve some of those issues are gonna be a big advantage

for them moving forward.

And then obviously anything that can give them insight

into what's the next best action?

What should I be doing?

What should I be paying attention to?

Are gonna be things that really are a big advantage.

And then just for me personally,

there are certain things that I ask for constantly,

and that's when we're building certain advantages,

and in my opinion, like the service acquisition model

that we have, because of integration with XTime,

Vauto can see service appointments,

and then we know who's coming into the service lane,

we know how to fill holes in our strategy

based off those and push offers to then,

I wanna be able to really increase that functionality

and maybe they message the customer

in VIN solutions from Vauto

because of the type of connectivity.

That's a good example right there.

Most of the time as a desk manager in the dealership,

I wasn't in the CRM, I was working somewhere else.

So again, tools like Deal Central let me know

that, hey, you have a new deal to review,

even if I'm appraising a car in Vauto

or if I'm checking CITs and dealer track,

that type of visibility across the system is huge.

And then the other one is the connectivity

and this has been something we've been working on

for a while, you see, I don't want a salesperson

or a manager to have to log into seven different systems.

I want them to be able to log in once

and navigate across the platforms

based on their permissions

and that's something we already have in play

with our bridge bar.

They can log in, maneuver through the system

and tools like Navigator that we're making now

are just basically like that on steroids more enhanced.

Well, Mo, you mentioned a great example there, right?

If you're in Vauto, you can message the customer

or like, is that, I'm assuming that doesn't exist right now.

That's an idea you have, right?

That's an idea I had.

I actually kind of built it with a Chrome extension

just to prove my point.

I like where your head's at.

So as we wrap up, if, you know, for dealers listening

and that they've just heard how you think

about the product, the direction

and where you're investing in,

of course, the data at the foundation of it,

what's like one thing that you could leave off

a dealer who's listening right now,

just one tactic, one benefit,

something that maybe has been top of mind for you

that they should know about.

It could be a feature,

but just something that today could make your life easier.

Does anything like that come to mind?

Any specific thing?

I mean, if I was back in dealership today,

it'd be putting processes in place

to make sure that our data's accessible and usable.

I think that'd be a big part of what I want to take place

just because I recognize that if you have dirty data.

Mo, is that my job or am I calling you to do that for me?

I think it's a combination of both.

I think that, you know, the dealership's gotta have

some sort of process to handle that

as far as how do we ingest data and where does it go?

And they really need to wrap their hands around

who has my data.

I think that's another part of that.

I think there was another leak today, right?

And that's something that dealers have gotta worry about.

And the more companies that you're connected to,

because there's a lot of dealers out there

that are connected like 15, 16 different vendors

and Joe's cousin startup,

they don't always understand that side of it.

So those are things that I think that they definitely

need to be paying attention to

because downstream, if you don't have the right data,

it's like putting diesel in a regular unleaded car.

It's gonna mess things up.

So we gotta pay attention to those things.

The other one is really, you gotta go back

and inspect what you have in place, what it's doing.

And I can tell you, I go into a lot of dealerships

where the dealer's like, no, we pay this for that.

Well, yeah, you pay that for the base thing,

but you have four or five different ads on.

So you're actually paying him this

and half of it's not getting used.

Why?

So I think it goes back to the inspect what you have

to make sure that it's giving you what you want.

You mentioned dirty data and I'm thinking myself,

I'm dealing with dirty shop base, dirty toilets.

I'm calling you.

What are you most excited about right now

with the pace of just AI in our industry and tech?

As a former developer, it's the pace of development.

I think that what-

It is moving quick.

Right, my 20 year old son works in the house

and he builds bots in his office.

He's 20.

So you gotta think that you got people like that.

Like robots, physical robots or like software?

Like he does stock trading.

You build stock trading bots for his website.

Wow.

And they're really accurate.

It's crazy.

But it's that kind of method.

Incredible.

Yeah, and I think you're gonna see more of it.

I think you're gonna see a rapid pace of development.

I think that you have that law of accelerating returns

where eventually you get the kind of singularity

and you can't really do much more.

But I think that you're gonna see mass development.

But I also think you'll see next year,

we might not hear as much about AI

because people are gonna become desensitized to it

and it's gonna be so ingrained in different products

and processes that we think about it differently.

So there'll be another word next year or the year after.

Yeah, well, I'm seeing human powered

as like the differentiator of certain things.

Well, we'll see where that goes.

Mo Zahabi, Cox Automotive.

Mo, thanks so much for coming on and giving us

a little sneak peek and sharing some tactics

from your perspective.

It's clear that you've had some good amount of time

in a dealership based on some of the things you brought up

and what we discussed.

So it's good to hear it from the perspective

of someone who's been there.

Mo Zahabi, thanks so much for coming on.

I appreciate it.

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.

"Dealers Are Chasing Leads Too Late!" – Why Predicting Buyers Is the Next Dealer Edge | Mo Zahabi, AVP of Product Consulting at Cox Automotive

About this episode

AI selection and integration

new car sales

used car sourcing strategies

first party data

Cox Automotive

dealership lot

Vin Solutions

F&I

ILM

CRM

Reynolds and Reynolds

CDK

desking

ADP

customer life cycle

margin compression

lead

response time

Podium

AI agents

voice AI

no longer owns

performance management

AI

predictive analytics

customer journey

AutoTrader

KBB

Accelerate My Deal

down payment

Busycar

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diesel

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