Inside the Lead Response Crisis Hurting Dealers (And What to Do About it) | Industry Spotlight
Car Dealership Guy Podcast
Inside the Lead Response Crisis Hurting Dealers (And What to Do About it) | Industry Spotlight
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Brand
BMW
BMW is a well-known car brand from Germany that makes luxury cars. They are famous for their sporty and high-quality vehicles.
Term
warranty
A warranty is like a guarantee from the car maker or dealer that they will fix problems with the car for a certain time after you buy it. If something goes wrong, they will take care of it without extra cost to you.
Company
Ziggler Auto Group
Ziggler Auto Group is a group of car dealerships that sell different brands of cars. They have their own rules and ways of doing things that might be different from other dealerships.
LIVE
Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of the Cardiolorship Guy Industry Spotlight.
I'm your host, Sam Darkin.
Coming up today, learn one strategy to compete with the nation's largest auto groups with
a local budget on people, process, and execution, how a GSM or GSM's role is expanding today
to understand, manage, and develop new team members, including agentic AI, plus three
tips to identifying and leaning into rapidly evolving AI.
Joining me on today's show is Stan Hancock, Chief Sales Officer of Podium, Parker Boyce,
General Sales Manager of BMW Utah, and special props to Podium for supporting today's content.
Let's get into it.
Hey Parker, so start out by telling us a little bit about yourself and the group you work
in.
Thanks Sam.
Yeah, I've been with this group.
It's Firmage Group Automotive.
We have three stores, BMW of Murray, BMW of Pleasant Grove, and many of Murray.
I've been with this group since about 2012.
I started as a porter, parking cars, moving my stars.
That's all the good ones start, right?
Yeah.
Start at bottom.
Learn as you go.
Work your way up.
Now I'm the General Sales Manager for our group, and my role is to oversee personnel
and process.
So Parker, you're in a marketplace with an incredible amount of competition.
So I was at F1 recently in Austin.
I met the CFO of Asbury, who bought up Larry Miller.
It was one of the largest acquisitions at that moment.
Ken Garf is a huge presence in the Utah marketplace.
They're all top five, top 10 on the list.
The young auto group, there are really big names and really big groups.
How do you compete in such a crowded competitive marketplace?
Yeah, that's a really great question.
Not only that, we have our BMW stores, and we're surrounded by really large BMW stores,
and people don't hesitate to shop cross-state boundaries any longer, right?
People are willing to travel for their cars, for business, and so for us, being able to
compete is having the best people, having the best staff, and really being able to meet
the needs of our customers as well as any of the big players can, and technology plays
a huge part of that, of having the right vendor partners that can provide us with a technology
that allows us to compete at that level.
So the store you're in right now is BMW.
It's the Pleasant Grove location, right?
That's right.
Just finished a remodel, and this store has been here since 2007.
Since 2007.
How many units do you sell new used combined out of that store?
New used combined, on average, we sell about 40 new cars, 40 used cars a month, so this
is kind of the smaller sibling to our Murray store that's been here for about 50 years.
Okay.
What do they sell?
Ballparkish.
Yeah, Ballparkish is about 150 new and used.
Combined.
New and used.
Okay.
150 new cars and 150 used cars each month.
Yeah.
And a robust Fiber and Service operation of both, right?
That's correct.
Yeah.
So what is your, at Pleasant Grove there, what does your sales floor look like?
How many sales people, how many BDC team members?
Yeah.
So, you know, something that's interesting about the way we operate, in order to compete
with some of our, you know, the bigger players in the market, we share a lot of our systems
and processes between the stores.
So we have a central BDC team that services all three stores.
We have one BDC agent on staff here specifically for our Pleasant Grove store that's able to
be here, you know, on site to assist customers if they come in asking for them specifically.
Otherwise though, it's a central BDC with five members and our sales staff here is six
sales people.
I'm curious about that because one of the, I've done centralized BDCs in other stores
in our group before and it always turns into a little bit of a fight between the stores.
And there's always GMs that are a little nervous that somebody's taking somebody's leads or
somebody's trying to cross sell, how do you guys eliminate that and get everybody working
on the same team?
Make it fair.
Yeah.
I think that's part of why we went to a central BDC system is to try to actually stoke some
of that competition and those conversations, right?
Having people compete for the business.
We believe that that's the best result for the customer, right?
Is even between, since we have two BMW stores, we want the stores to compete against one
another to ensure that the customer is going to do business with a store that gives them
the best experience, the best pricing to feel like they're being taken care of.
So you've been a part of that location for a while.
How would you describe the changing customer or consumer appetite or consumer preferences?
I mean, obviously a lot more is done online with customers today than used to be.
What do you sense from customer expectations in your marketplace?
Yeah, I think everybody, when COVID happened, I think that was a big point of change in
how business was done.
And I think everyone thought that that was going to be the thing that people wanted to
do all their business remote, that nobody would come into the store anymore.
We haven't seen that really play out.
People still like to come in, visit the store, shake someone's hand.
So there's still a lot of people that ultimately will complete the transaction in store.
But what we saw was that customers typically start the buying process online now.
About half of our leads are generated from internet leads.
The other half is phone up and walk in.
So only 25% of the time when a customer comes in, are we meeting them to the first time
when they walk in the store.
The other 75%, they're starting their shopping online and either calling in or submitting
an internet lead.
What we've done to try to still provide a really great experience to those customers
is we now do walk around videos and virtual test drives on nearly all of our new and
pre-owned vehicles to try to give that information ahead of time and compel people to want to
come in and visit the store.
Yeah.
So you mentioned this increase in customers reaching out from online and only 25% when
they walk in, it's their first touch.
So how do you solve for that in a store your size, all the different call volume, lead
volume?
I mean, that's a staffing nightmare.
Yeah.
I mean, I guess the answer is you can't.
Anybody who says they can hire good people that fit their culture, that they can train
and onboard to solve that problem in real time, I don't think it's possible.
And so, you know, we tried a few different things.
We tried outsourcing our chat and lead response.
We tried to, you know, put it onto the sales people, which I think is, you know, a semi
viable option.
But again, they're going to be busy with customers.
They're going to be on the sales for doing other things.
So at that point, it was like, how do we find technology?
How do we utilize technology to be able to get in front of customers and provide them
the experience they're expecting?
Why didn't the outsourcing work?
See, outsource to call center, right?
To India or Dubai or somewhere.
What, what, what didn't that work?
Yeah.
I mean, it solved the problem with being able to respond to leads within five minutes.
But those, you know, those groups aren't able to provide any type of information
or value their offsite.
They aren't experts in the products.
They aren't trained to do it.
I got to tell you, there's nothing more frustrating than calling a business and
knowing you're getting something off site and they can do nothing.
I've had that experience so many times.
And as a company, you lose complete credibility.
So you tried a few different paths.
Where did you ultimately land to solve for that?
You know, giving a consistent lead response time, but then also handling
kind of that after hour response parkers.
Yeah, great question.
So, you know, we, we partnered with podium on a few different things.
We'd use them for reputation management, for payments, for chat.
And we worked, we were working with them and they presented this new employee,
this AI tool, Jerry.
And the, the most compelling thing about this was.
Number one, having 24 seven availability to respond to our customers and, and
actually provide information to them, not simply collects their information to
pass along to the sales team to eventually respond to, right?
Answer questions in real time and additionally be able to engage with
customers and set appointments.
And it was to the point where it was like, Hey, look, we've got nothing.
We've got nothing to lose here.
Let's give this a shot and see what happens.
So that brings Thanh on to the show.
Thanks for being here, Thanh.
You're the partner at podium, chief sales officer.
Tell us about this AI tool that Parker implemented to help handle that lead
volume, both in and outbound.
What, how does it work?
Yeah.
Well, first off, great to be here, Sam Parker.
I am a customer of BMW Pleasant Grove.
Nice.
Using job, Parker's team's fantastic.
So it's fun to be here.
It's kind of coincidental actually that I get the chance to work with both you
today, but yeah, I mean, look, Parker nailed it, right?
Like podium, you think of our history.
We've been around for about 10 years.
We started in the reputation management space.
Then we got into like marketing and communications and lead gen.
And as a software company was always frustrating too, because you, you
generate all these leads for, for a dealership and you feel like you're adding
a ton of value and you're showing them all these communications and
conversations, but ultimately those leads go to a person, right?
That we don't, you know, the software company and, and the dealerships
obviously doing their best trying to employ the right people, trying to find
different solutions.
But like at the end of the day, you're still relying on humans.
And I run a sales team.
I know how salespeople are.
They have great days.
They have bad days.
They have, you know, weekend activities and all this stuff.
And so, you know, you think about all of this valuable leads and then saying, what
would be the thing that would help us bring the most value to our customers?
It's converting those leads at the highest rate possible.
And so, you know, we tested, of course, we looked at a bunch of different tools.
AI comes onto the scene a few years ago.
Open AI, we had worked with them for a few years to kind of test out some
different models, but we never quite loved exactly what we saw.
We actually test it with a few folks early on.
And we had, I think three dealerships, two loved it, one hated it, but we weren't
quite to the point that we felt like we could really count on this AI to be
truly game changing for the dealership and take over the work of some of the
humans that you have to deal with in a dealership.
Well, then about a year and a half ago, Open AI launched their newest version
3.5 and that was kind of the game changer for everything.
And we looked at it and said, hey, this not only could change the dealership
world, this could literally change how every business interacts with their
customers, like this is that powerful of a technology.
So we quickly started to build Jerry, which is our AI BDC sales agent.
Great things about Jerry is he knows the automotive world inside and out.
He knows Parker's inventory inside and out.
He never gets sick, never takes time off, doesn't go on vacation.
You only have to train him once and he never has to relearn the same thing over
and over again, doesn't have a bad day, right?
So you think about all of the power that you can leverage in AI and then put
that against all of these valuable leads that Parker and his team are working
so hard to generate and it becomes a really powerful combination.
So we're excited for the impact that it's having for them.
And of course, you know, a lot of other dealership partners we work with.
All right.
So I submit a lead to BMW, Pleasant Grove, let's say I submit a lead at eight
o'clock and it's a text, it's an email or I leave a voice message.
How does Jerry respond to that?
What does it look like?
Yeah, and actually we were now able to kind of take leads from anywhere.
So whether it's on domains that Parker owns like their website or third party
sites that Parker never necessarily volunteered to participate in, but is forced
to because of the just the nature of the car dealership industry.
We can take all of those leads and then essentially it comes into Jerry.
Jerry grabs that lead within less than 30 seconds.
Our goal is hopefully within 10 seconds.
He can understand the question, whether it's a sales or service request, differentiate
the two, and then within 20 seconds, send a text message back to that customer
with all the information they're looking for.
But the real goal of Jerry is to convert them into a test drive.
Because at the end of the day, Jerry still can't.
Well, he can sell you a car online and not yet, right?
We don't want that, right?
We know, especially in Parker's world, the best thing Jerry can do is get it
to one of his great salespeople on the lot and turn customer from a one time
buyer into a long term service customer as well.
So Jerry's whole goal is to make it a seamless transition from lead to the
handoff to the humans, who only they can do that super powerful job of actually
selling that customer with their hands on the.
If I might, the big thing that we've noticed about Jerry is, is he bridges
the gap between like cashier and kiosk where someone wants immediate information.
So a lot of like fast food restaurants, they've installed kiosks.
They're like, Hey, this is better than a low wage employee at taking your order.
But it can sometimes be frustrating because you're like, I just want to tell
it what I want.
I don't want to search for it.
And that's how the theory is so good at someone will submit a completely, you
know, generic lead and he jumps in and he's going to say, Hey, look, I got
your request for information.
He's going to intercept them while they're still shopping before they can
go submit five or six more leads to other dealers.
And he's not only going to say, Hey, I saw you're interested in maybe an
X three, but can I also show you some alternatives of other cars you might be
interested in?
And that's something that we spend a lot of hours trying to train ourselves,
people to do.
It's, it's hard to do it.
You train Jerry once he offers alternatives.
He creates a compelling reason to, Hey, come visit our store.
We have the best inventory.
We've got the options.
We have what you're looking for.
And again, like that said, try to get an appointment set that they can come in.
So are you able to compare like, uh, if the goal is to bring them in for a
test drive, are you able to compare the rate of success pre-Jerry to now?
Like what type of a lift or change did, did Jerry bring to your BDC department
in being able to bring customers in for that test drive off of you to give you an
idea, we turned Jerry on.
And it's one of those things that we turned Jerry on and not everybody in the
dealership knew that this was happening.
And he started setting test drive appointments overnight.
People are shopping at 2 a.m.
They're eating ships.
They're looking for cars.
And he's setting an appointment for the next day and customers would come in.
They say, Hey, I'm here for a test drive.
I was working with Jerry.
And my, she comes to me and she's like, Hey, you're supposed to tell me when
you hire a new salesperson, I've got people asking for this guy nonstop.
Yeah.
Who is he and where is he?
Yeah.
And it's, it's hard to, uh, it's hard to explain to some people.
Hey, look, that's just our AI tool.
He doesn't actually work here.
We're going to get him with a salesperson.
So it started, it, it almost created new problems of, Hey, he's, he's so
good at setting these test drives.
Now what?
Like how do we now use our staff and auxiliary ways to support him setting
these appointments and these test drives to ensure that the handoff is smooth,
that they're getting the best service possible when they come into the store.
How do you decide where those leads go?
So you've got a test drive.
I think that's fascinating.
Cause in the old world of internet leads, like, I don't know, 50% of the leads
were just complete fake leads.
All right.
They were worthless.
Like a salesperson was not really all that interested in following up on it
because it was somebody up late at night, really just trolling.
They had no interest in buying.
They filled out a form.
Now you've got a customer walking through that front door there to see a
vehicle pre qualified.
Like that is like, talk about the difference in that experience as a salesperson.
Now all my interactions are more, uh, they're, they're higher return.
Yeah.
That's it.
I think, uh, I haven't been, I've been in the business for 13 years.
I don't consider myself like an old dog in the car business, but when I started
selling cars, I didn't get internet leads.
I didn't know that I don't think they existed, right?
We didn't have any, any sort of BDC really handling those because they didn't exist.
Now you've got half of the leads coming in strictly through third party websites
or our own website in the form of an internet lead.
And that customer is going to walk in the front door before they even talk to
any one of our staff.
That's a really nice sales funnel, uh, that creates great conversion.
And I think the difference is for the salespeople, that's what they're best at.
Like fans said, could Jerry complete a transaction entirely?
Maybe, is that what we want him to do?
Probably not, not right now for sure.
So it's, it's, it's really utilizing our staff and the best way possible,
putting each person in the seat that they're most successful at and allowing
them to be great.
And anyone who knows a salesperson, they're going to be really, at least
on our staff, really charismatic, really customer focused, and they're going to
provide, once they show up to their store, they're going to get a great experience.
Yeah.
You don't have to focus spending time with your salespeople, training them on answering
that lead on the phone or text or email.
You can focus on what to do with that customer when they're in store, which
that's the higher, higher, high value, high return activity, right?
Yeah, or having a salesperson on the phone, making 80 calls a day, trying to
generate, uh, an appointment or a lead.
Whereas that's not necessarily the best return on their skill set.
Yeah.
So then there are dealers that are watching this show right now and they're
saying, okay, look,
I give up, I've heard all these AI companies.
Everybody's coming out of the woodwork.
I've said this often on the show.
It's like an arms race.
It's like the nuclear arms.
It's like, it's, it's everybody is talking about it.
And yet there's a lot of promise without return in this AI space.
So hearing Parker's experience and how beneficial this tool has been to their
BDC and kind of scaling them and making them competitive with Asbury and other
big groups around them.
What advice would you give to dealers today when they're looking for a tool
that will do just what podium and Jerry has done for, uh, BMW, uh, uh,
pleasant Grove, what, what, what should you look for?
And what should you avoid?
Yeah, great question.
So there's a couple of things that come to mind.
Like first off, like, yeah, to your point, not all AI is created equal, right?
There's AI that can help my daughter cheat on her homework, right?
And complete her writing papers.
And that's great, but that's not going to win you leads in the dealership space.
And so I think a lot of times when you hear AI, that's what you think is like
this tool that can kind of co-pilot on some content, maybe write some things
better, maybe send a text message in a more grammatical format, but that's,
that's not a genetic AI, which is true employees in your business doing the job
of humans, but better, right?
And I think what Parker is, is, has seen is he can manage a fleet of sales
people, train them on the things that they need to do to, to be really successful
at their job, and then also manage essentially a fleet of AI employees that
can help do the job that traditionally was done by humans that wasn't high ROI.
And quite frankly, they didn't like to do it anyway.
And they weren't very, in some cases, maybe not great at it either, right?
And so first thing I would say is find an agentic AI partner that actually has
built employees that can do those jobs so that you can take your great people
and transition them into higher ROI, higher return initiatives.
So that's number one.
So one, how do I know if it's a, yeah, if it's true agentic?
So, so great question.
The biggest thing you look for is, can it actually get you to an end goal?
So in the case of podium, Jerry, his goal is to actually schedule a test
drive with the customer's information on the calendar, right?
Versus like, can I, can I go in and surface an inventory link
because you asked about a car?
Sure.
There's AI that can do that.
That's not agentic.
That's not agentic.
That's just simply taking quick answers from a database of information
and pushing it out to a customer.
In Jerry's case, whether it's on text or coming soon in November voice, I can
take information, have full conversation, have empathy, have human like response,
and then ultimately get to, hey, from everything I've heard, you should come
on to the lot and test drive that car.
So that empathy is what Parker's talking about when the customer comes
through the door and asks for Jerry.
When the customer knows that name and asks for them, that's agentic AI, right?
Because they've made that connection.
They've brought them through the door so that the live person can do it.
All right.
So that's one.
What's two?
I gotta tell you the story real quick.
See, it's so fun.
Full circle, full circle for us here at podium.
I mean, we started as a reviews tool, generating five star reviews
for our dealership partners.
Yeah.
Reputation management, right?
And here's what's funny is Jerry, our AI employee, we've now calculated
over 2,000 five star reviews across Google, mentioning Jerry as a great
customer service employee.
So that's awesome.
We started as a reputation man and now management.
Now we built an employee who actually collects five star reviews.
So it's pretty fun.
We joke at our store that Jerry won employee of the month, the first three
months that he worked for us because the guy didn't miss any days of work.
He had amazing customer service, amazing experience, but you know, that's,
that's exactly it.
He really does.
Like we call him Jerry because he acts like an employee.
He's not just an AI tool.
He's not just a bot.
Like he does an amazing job serving our clients.
Parker, doesn't that scare the daylights out of your other salespeople?
I, if it doesn't, it should, but at the same time we talk about like, Hey, AI
is going to take jobs.
It's going to create a lot of jobs too.
And I think the big difference, right?
Like to, to jump on here is like, what did, what did we look for when we're
going to add AI and we're going to try to, you know, reinvigorate our BDC process?
It really is like for us looking for a dealer partner that we can work out.
We're quick to fire a vendor that doesn't do what they say they're going to do.
It's not a big deal for us to switch and go somewhere else.
And usually when you jump on with someone else, they're going to give you a deal
to come and try their, their software.
So there's incentives to leave.
The reason why we stay with podium is because they do, they are such a good
dealer partner for us where I feel like their agent was created not only with
dealers in mind, but in conjunction with feedback that they're receiving.
And, and we're working with them to try to make the tool better all the time.
So they aren't solving problems that they think exist.
They're solving problems that we're saying, Hey, squeaky wheel over here.
We need to be better in this way.
Plus you'd have to like sit down with Jerry and fire Jerry, which it sounds like
if everybody loves the amount of deals he brings in, that'd be a tough task to do.
Right.
You'd be in trouble if you tried to do that.
It would probably be a pleasant, a pleasant conversation.
That's the thing.
When you give Jerry feedback that talking as a manager, talking to an employee
and saying, Hey, you aren't doing a very good job.
That's a horrible conversation.
It's hard.
It's hard to do that.
Jerry, you just tell him, you say, Hey, look, I need you to water.
So, so this is a mind set shift in automotive too.
Right.
So Dan made a great point.
And we got to come back to the list.
So we've, we've got one a genetic AI.
So let's come back to that in just a second.
But I want to also pull the thread of you.
Now you're managing people and you're also managing AI.
Like Parker, do you think about that in your daily tasks?
And like, how does managing that AI employee change what you do day to day?
Like how do, what does that look like?
You're not doing performance reviews.
You're not doing a, you're not doing pizza on Saturday for Jerry.
What, how do you manage Jerry?
Hey, you kind of are doing performance reviews, right?
So Jerry is an agent, but there's also training agents within the tool that when
you provide feedback, they're going to go in and train Jerry on the responses.
So it is very sudden to, you know, training an employee and providing feedback.
You go in and you look at the conversations, you look at what you like or what you
don't like is happening.
And then you provide feedback.
The difference with training Jerry versus another employee is you only have to
tell him once and he's going to take that feedback.
He's going to apply it across the board and going to improve over time.
So here's the big thing, right?
Obviously all of the big dealer players are going to have access to the same
sort of tools that we do.
I think anyone, anyone will tell you that it's not simply the, the software
that's going to save your business.
It's how you use it.
It's how you have personnel in place that can leverage that technology to
really improve sales, improve experience, provide the training and feedback required.
So a lot of those managerial, you know, experiences and, and tools that you're
going to have, you're going to use for your AI employee as well.
Okay.
So, and then we've got to go back to the list, but, but how often are you going
in and intentionally engaging with Jerry to train Jerry?
It is a, it's a lot less often than I'm engaging with our BDC agents on training
for them.
And I think that's the key, right?
Is right now we still, we're in that hybrid zone where you need to have
live BDC agents, you need to have human beings to still do some of those soft
touch tasks that Jerry can't quite get to or escalations that he's going to
create when he needs help with something.
But the reality is, is it's a lot less often than, than you might think.
You go through a hundred conversations, there's going to be one or two things
you point out where it takes, change it up a little bit.
But that's the future of automotive then.
And I think that's something people aren't thinking about is, is as a leader
in automotive, you've got to be thinking about, you've got your people,
you're developing, you're growing, but then you've also got desigent agents that
can help you execute better and bring your best to your customer every single
day.
And, and a great, I think this is worth under highlighting a great dealer, a
great GM, a great GSM needs to think about how do I engage with that agent?
How do I train and develop so that we as a store become better?
Not just people, but AI.
And to do that, you've got to understand that.
I tell that to our teams here all the time, then, right?
But, but Sam, like the old principles of how a dealership won are still the same
principles.
It's just, they are.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's an expanded, it's an expanded role, right?
And like, Parker nailed it.
Like everyone's going to have AI eventually.
Every dealer is going to have it.
The question is, is who's going to understand it?
Yes.
And train it the best way to win, right?
And to be competitive.
And that's just like your people right now.
The more you invest, train, develop, you win.
AI is going to be the same thing.
It's just going to do it at a level that we have never been able to achieve at scale
like you can with humans, right?
But if I want to be a great general manager today, or a great dealer, or a great GSM,
I'm going to learn about AI, Agenta-KI.
I'm going to understand, I'm going to embrace it.
And I'm going to help bring that into my organization so we can best deliver.
And you've done that, Parker.
Props to you for, I mean, it sounds like you almost kind of unleashed it.
People didn't totally know it.
And then you got the embrace and then you probably went and educated.
All right.
We got to finish our list though, Dan.
What's item number two?
Well, Parker, he's already like two steps ahead of us like he was with his leadership.
Yeah.
The thing he mentioned is really critical for Agenta-KI,
which is you got to be able to customize it, give it feedback,
and have it essentially machine learning and change, right?
So in any sort of AI, everyone will say there's machine learning,
but you also need tools where you can actually go in and train the AI to train itself.
So my ability to say, hey, if they ask these two questions,
I want you to prioritize this question.
And if these two policies conflict with each other,
this is the policy that takes precedent.
And let me give you an example of that.
If your example is, I'm trying to think of the dealership space,
do you guys offer, let's say, a warranty?
So there's an AI out there where every time someone says warranty,
it says, yes, we offer warranties.
But there's policies in the dealership that say, hey,
actually it may not actually be true if this, this, and this is true.
You need AI that can essentially read those policies and overwrite that
based on what that dealership customization is,
because every dealership's a little bit different.
And that's the training part, right?
And that's why that Agenta-KI is different for Ziggler Auto Group
than it is for BMW, uh, pleasant growth.
And so Jerry Podium has a whole backend system
where you can essentially give it, if then policies,
if they say this, then we respond this way.
But if they also say this, we respond that way.
So then I teach it, I train it, it's kind of ours.
Is it, is that data then available?
Is it, is it, can it get out there, whatever out there means?
And if we leave you and we're not with Podium anymore,
does Jerry get erased or, uh, or, or who owns,
like he's been trained, he's got intellectual property,
there's data, who owns that?
Yeah.
And this is the fear that I think a lot of dealerships have is like, well,
wait a minute, what, what do I get?
What do I keep?
And a couple of things.
So first off, like the only thing that is cross functional across all of Jerry
for automotive are the automotive basics, right?
Everything else is proprietary to your dealership.
So that would like, again, our automotive Jerry knows how to say
lot versus practice, customer versus patient, right?
If you're talking about like other industries,
but everything else is proprietary.
So we work with you, we hold your hand, we build it, we go in real deep.
We actually go on site in some cases to get your AI up and running
with your inventory, your information, your playbooks,
your, your way you would say things versus how they say it in pleasant grow versus Murray,
right? All of that.
All of that's yours, completely secure, never goes to enhance the other agents
of other dealerships who are not investing the same.
That's cool.
Yeah.
That's not cool.
What happens if we leave you?
I mean, look, that is, that is the downside.
If you leave all that playbook or Jerry stays with us, but you know, look,
I mean, I guess the bright side is, is that playbook you've built,
you can now potentially duplicate.
Now you'll never find AI as good as Jerry.
We know that.
But, but thinking about the technology world, do you foresee a day where kind of that
customization that companies offer, like maybe people will start to think about,
Hey, this is my data and I can take those customizations to different companies.
I mean, you guys have a huge advantage right now because you're way out in front of everybody else.
The industry will catch up at some point.
Like, will the industry start to think about ownership of that data and,
and those preferences and personalizations in a different way?
Do you think then?
Yeah.
It's a great question.
I mean, I think on some level, um, yeah, I could see worlds like the way I think about it,
maybe Sam is, yeah, you might have a world where, um, an AI czar becomes like a real thing,
right?
Inside each dealership where someone who understands the playbooks to make your AI as
successful as possible starts to become a real role in saleships, you know,
versus right now where Parker just has all the initiative to, to build it for,
for, you know, BMW, because he sees the value in it.
You might actually, people whose job is to start to like create those plays.
Yep.
So.
All right.
So a genetic AI, AI that's trainable.
Yep.
And then the, the, the, probably the final two things I would say is AI that has the empathy
of a human and can sound like you, right?
And I think that's really big for us.
Like we work with a lot of family owned dealerships, a lot of generational businesses.
And one of the things they say is, Hey, our, our one differentiator is who we are.
And now long we've been in this market and the community and we want it,
we want Jerry to feel like an extension of that brand, that culture, that voice.
And so the ability again to give it that customization and that level of customization
is critical.
And then the final thing I would say is the channels that can support.
Okay.
Again, is that mean?
So think of like, can it support texting from your website?
Can it support texting from third party sites where, you know,
customers are finding or accessing your dealership and your inventory?
What about phone?
What about voice?
Like, can we take it from text to actual phone calls?
And that's why with podium, we're very excited to announce that on, you know,
early November, our first voice AI agent for dealerships is available service.
What about service request?
Can it handle service?
Can it handle follow up of a customer that goes dark on you?
I mean, this is a thing I would imagine as a sales leader.
I know my, my guys and gals are really bad at follow up.
Well, you have a tool that can actually proactively outreach to customers and say,
hey, you can contact us yesterday.
Are you still interested?
You would love it if every sales rep just did that.
Unfortunately, we know that's not their strong suit at times.
So Jerry can handle that channel as well, which is outbounding to customers.
So I think the final piece I'd say is just multi-channel can support all those different
ways that customers are finding and or wanting to connect with you.
So it seems to me.
So as you list those different things, the, the different channels that it can connect on
seems to me that there's so many different AI, maybe even agentic solutions out there that
are all kind of competing together.
Like, do you have any advice for a dealer group that's like looking at like,
they've got four different AI, agentic AI things.
And they're all kind of like dealing in their own space, but there's crossover and maybe there's
not like, how should a dealer group be thinking about that?
Is it, should you be looking at one partner and try to go all in with one partner?
Is it okay to have a bunch of different tools or agents?
Yeah.
I mean, I've got a strong opinion here in a strong position, obviously.
And, you know, we work podium actually in a couple of industries.
Automotive obviously is our biggest.
And what we see interesting is automotive is the only place where you guys actually will
have multiple solutions doing different jobs.
Most, most companies we work with want to consolidate onto one platform that can kind
of do it all.
Obviously, from my perspective, again, you want an AI where if you train it on sales,
it's on service.
If you train it on text, it's trained on voice.
So the issue now becomes if you've got four different solutions, you're literally training
four different AI agents, all of the same thing.
And there's not a lot of crossovers.
So yes, absolutely.
We'd be in the camp of find a partner that can do it all.
So it's a one to many training and investment there.
What is it about automotive that makes us try to go find all these different solutions?
I don't know.
I know it's an interesting world.
We see it a lot, right?
Like people have, you've got your chat provider, you've got your phone provider,
you've got your, you know, your reputation management provider.
It is an interesting space.
I don't know if it's you're always chasing the best in breed and you just have that
competitive nature about you.
I don't know.
But so I'll tell you something.
And this is like unsolicited from us.
But in our auto group, we have a Jerry in several of our stores,
our Subaru store in Fort Wayne.
It's the only Subaru store we have in that.
Or it's the only store we have in that city.
It's the first of what hopefully one day will be a bunch of stores
because it's a great market for Wayne, Indiana.
And it drives me nuts because the team does, they talk about it like it's almost alive.
It has a personality to all the things that you talked about,
you know, the, the agentic characteristics, the ability to train and develop and grow over time
and provide feedback and different integrations.
And it, it, it gets me thinking that this as quickly as it's evolving,
like we are good.
The future of automotive is embracing it as almost, you know, another team member growing
with it, training it not to compete with us, but probably in a fun way,
but just to help us deliver our best.
So Parker, my question is when Jerry gets a voice in November, what does he sound like?
Man, hopefully, hopefully, you know, hopefully like me, I'd love to, I'd love to hear Jerry,
you know, maybe Jerry Sloan.
I've always wondered what.
Oh, there you go.
Jerry was Jerry Sloan, longtime jazz coach here in Salt Lake.
Yeah.
I'd love to hear, hear that.
But I don't know.
I, I think whatever podium does, like it's always been great for us, right?
We've been on a lot of different programs.
One reason that we've like stuck with them is the user interface is always good.
The end results always good.
And the toughest critics in the dealership are the end users, the sales people.
Right.
And they aren't, they're going to be quick to tell you how much they hate the vendor that you're using.
They don't, they don't say that with, with podium.
So whatever it is, it's going to be, it'll be pleasant.
All right.
Well, last question that we appreciate you guys being on the show.
Thane, what do you see the future of?
It's the thing I'm fascinated with.
This technology has developed so quickly.
Wrap.
So wrap.
Is anybody that looked at this six months ago doesn't even know what's out there today.
It's so fast.
Like if you had to look a year down the road, what does a genetic AI look like in automotive?
Yeah.
So it's a great question.
And then, you know, I, I, I wish my CEO was here to respond to this because I mean,
I feel like he's already two, three, four years ahead, which makes him,
which is why he's so great at what he does.
I think there's a lot in voice still.
Like voice, look, it's easy to get it right on tax.
It's very different with when you're now on the phone.
I'll just give you a quick example, Sam.
By the way, I think you should be the voice of our Jerry.
You're, you're fast.
Bring it.
Let's go.
Oh man.
We, our first prototype, we wanted to sound like they were actually doing something.
Right.
So the first, yeah.
Hi Parker.
And you could hear clacking in the background, like, you know, keyboard and it was just so
loud.
And then it was almost so aggressive.
It reminded all of the, of the meme of like Jim Carrey, you know, like banging on his
keyboard, right?
So like, yeah, so many optimizations, I think generally in the voice piece to make it to
where to your point, nobody has a good experience with the Robo dial, right?
Like, I don't want to be with something.
Oh, we hate it.
Airlines, hotels.
I mean, I was in a hotel and I couldn't zero out.
Like it just kept asking me questions.
I'm like, no, I don't want, I want to talk.
Yep.
So there's a whole world of optimization improvement and further development that I
think can be handled there.
The other thing I think is just the proactive approach, right?
A lot of the AI right now is reactive.
It's message comes in, I respond.
Message, you know, issue comes in.
The AI goes and tags an endpoint to get the data and responds.
I think there's so much to be done in the proactive space.
When does it start to actually remind your salespeople to do certain things, right?
Where the, could you get to a world where the AI actually manages the humans in a way?
Now that does sound scary.
That's everyone's worst fears, then.
It's every movie.
Every movie.
True.
But I don't know.
I think, I think it's not too crazy to think like, hey, partner, remember to do this, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Those are a couple of things that come to mind for us.
Yeah.
A couple of things really fast that I like to see AI doing for us in the future,
because it is moving so fast and there's so many good things that it's done for us already.
But already I'm starting to see, okay, what are the pain points that we still have and
how do we solve those?
And with that, I think it is proactive.
We have a huge portfolio of customers, customers that have done business with us before,
that we continuously have to engage with and salespeople honestly are bad at engaging with
the customer and playing the long sales cycle and not necessarily just working with the person
in front of them.
So not even reminding a salesperson to do it, but then proactively getting in front of
a customer and saying, hey, you bought your car a year ago.
I see that you're in for service next week.
While you're here, could we offer you a free detail?
Can we show you some of the options that have come out since you purchased your vehicle?
Whatever it is, because AI, what we found is it's so good at is taking all of the data points,
being able to summarize that and then leverage that in a way that's going to be beneficial
to the customer first, hopefully to the customer and then ideally to the business as well in
terms of a return on investment and taking care of our clients.
Yeah, don't I?
Well, what a cool conversation.
Thanks for sharing this as a best practice of you and the crew, Parker at BMW,
Pleasant Grove in Utah.
It's fun to catch up on all things AI, agentic AI, and excited to see what the future ends up
being.
You know, maybe we get together in a year, five years, and we're astonished at how quickly
it's all developed.
But at the end of the day, it's still about a human connecting with a human to sell that car
and create that great experience.
Jerry, it seems just helps to support that.
So Parker Boyce, Than Hancock, appreciate you guys being on the show.
Thank you.
Thanks, Sam.
Thanks, Parker.
Appreciate it.
About this episode
Exploring the lead response crisis affecting car dealerships, this episode features insights from industry experts Parker Boyce and Than Hancock. They discuss strategies for smaller dealerships to compete with larger groups using technology and AI, specifically focusing on the implementation of an AI tool named Jerry. This tool enhances customer engagement by providing 24/7 responses and streamlining the lead conversion process. The conversation highlights the evolving role of General Sales Managers and the importance of adapting to changing consumer behaviors in the automotive market.
Original notes
Welcome to Industry Spotlight—a focused series hosted by Sam D’Arc, highlighting standout dealerships and innovative companies, and exploring the trends driving success in today’s automotive market. Today, Sam sits down with Parker Boice, General Sales Manager at BMW Utah and Than Hancock, Chief Sales Officer at Podium.
This episode is brought to you by:
1. Podium - Don’t miss another lead. With Podium’s AI BDC, dealerships are seeing an 80% increase in after-hours appointments by handling leads 24/7. Instantly respond to inquiries, book test drives, and let your team focus on what matters: closing deals. Learn how Podium can help you sell more cars at https://www.podium.com/car-dealership-guy
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Topics:
01:15 How to compete in a crowded market?
04:45 How are customer shopping trends changing?
06:10 Biggest lead management challenge and solution?
11:53 How does AI improve customer experience?
18:57 What is agentic AI?
22:20 Will AI replace sales jobs?
26:15 Future of AI in dealerships?
28:01 Who owns and controls AI data?
37:31 How fast is AI evolving?
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