0:00 / 0:00

Live at Digital Dealer InterBrew Series feat. Ashley Lopez Cavazos

Car Guy Coffee Jan 04, 2024 19 min

0:00

About this episode

Ashley Lopez Cavazos joins the Car Guy Coffee Podcast to discuss her journey in the automotive industry and the importance of building meaningful relationships with customers. She emphasizes the need for dealerships to adapt to digital tools and create personalized marketing strategies. The conversation highlights the shift from traditional sales tactics to a more consultative approach, focusing on understanding customer needs and enhancing their experience. Ashley shares her passion for helping others and the impact of community involvement in the automotive space.

Topics: digital marketing customer experience relationship building consultative selling community involvement personalized marketing sales team training automotive industry trends

Car Guy Coffee Podcast Live at Digital Dealer Interbrew Series feat. Ashley Lopez Cavazos By PureCars

Welcome to the Car Guy Coffee Podcast Live at Digital Dealer Interbrew Edition, where we interview Dealers, Vendors, Sales Guys and Gals as well as incredible Voices in our industry that are committed to seeing the Upshift and Uplift of our culture. Featured in this episode is Digital Transformation | Marketing Director at DeMontrond Auto Group, Ashley Lopez Cavazos. Let’s Brew!

Don’t forget to share and subscribe!

Brew Brought to you By Our Proud Sponsors At:

https://www.drivecentric.com
www.vincue.com
www.fixedopsdigital.com
www.teammxs.com
www.m1-data.com
www.321ignition.com
www.purecars.com

Select text to request an explanation

Hello, and welcome to the Car Guy Coffee Podcast. This Digital Dealer interview

series is brought to you by our friends and partners at Pure Card, ben Q Team, MXS, Fixed Ops, Digital and one Data and Analytics at Drive Center. If you want more information or want to partner with the group,

go to carguy Coffee dot com. Let's brew what's going on, car

Guys and cargoles. It's Ramirez, the Car Guy, and it's frellin Art's

subprime hero, and we are excited to be brewined solutions and we are excited, really excited to have this incredible young lady ruin with us again. You

might have been able to listen, watch, or enjoy for most recent episode on our DC twenty interview Interbrew series it's our word, I don't even want to say, but our interbrew series where she got to talk about some of the solutions that are ruined, especially with the drive centric platform. Folks,

listen. She is a serious solutionary and we are excited to shout to them

out on tops that she's here. We are honored to have once again the

one, the only Ashley Come. I think we got it. I think

we got it. Do we get it, you got it, we got

it, We got it in that matters because the namesake is right over there.

Now. That's good because because the people that have been on our show

today, just like you, are amazing people that need to be talked about, that need to be shouted out loud, that need to be lifted up on a pedestal. And that's the whole reason we have the show. It's

for people just like you. Actually, you've become more than somebody that we

walk by. You become a friend of me. Right, I really feel

like that we've really connected. You've got to know my wife, even your

husband and my wife gotten to know each other, so we've become friends, really family. I agree with that. Thank you for saying man. And

I feel the same way about you all and and I think it's great.

So having you on the show is beyond business for us. It's more than

cars, it's more than all that stuff. It's about sharing greatness that's right

now, and there's greatness going on. You're doing a lot of things in

your life that you never could imagine, right, but yet you're doing more and more every time I see you. A person who does things and goes

above and beyond. What is something that drives you? What makes you say

you know what I know. I can be like, hey, this is

what I do, but I want to do more. What makes you want

to do more? The people? And it's about what we fell in love

with this industry for right, Like you think about car dealerships and all of us says and never thought I'd work in car sales. And then you get

into dealership and you meet people and you start working with those customers and you're like, I want to make a difference, right, I want to change what people think of this industry. I want to help customers who maybe wouldn't

get a chance. For most people, right, they get turned away from

about credit, that's bad experiences, whatever it is, and you want to put that around. And so when I hitch the root of it, Hey

Dealers, Car Guy, Coffee podcast and Certified Solutionaries are honored to be part of EVE. Thank you. The solutions they've been ruined for you to acquire

more vehicles, advertised merchandise and manage those vehicles has made them one of the most sought after BELA partners in the marketing. They are one hundred percent c

G see it proved, and when you visit them at bench dot com, you'll see a whole hill of beans where of reasons why Tan let's prove.

How did I know that was going to be her answer? I knew that

we're brewined solutions, b s bruined solutions, my friend. When it comes

to that kind of stuff and you're bringing that type of energy and you're about the people, that tells me something about your part. That tells me about

where your core values are. When you're working with the autobup that you work

with now, which they're so blessed to have you, and I know that you're blessed with Sua Street. I know that you have blessings by being there,

but they're plessed to have you. What's one of the biggest focuses that

you're doing at your store right now to be able to detect I think right now it's really we are growing and our sales team is trying to understand digitally more than to be right to be the customer where they're at. For me,

a big focus with my store is getting that experience where we want it to be. So that's we've been doing things. Really, it's been easy

the past few years and for some for most right for easy to sell cars because we've had inventory and we've had high demand and it's just been a really great place. But now it'script script around and we need to get back to

our roofs of the basics of selling cars, what the digital experience should be like. It's not just a kind of Hey, Hyden, when can you

come in because I was like, Oh, I'll be there today. I

want to buy. Now we have that car and a lot. We really

have to understand where we are with everything that's went on in the world and the technology. And I think the tech is a big one, and so

helping and my celles schemes get up to date and up to speed on everything.

So it's true sales more that they I should say, I guess adapt these new processes, this technology, being digital, with their customers speaking to them where they want to be spoke to, the better that the experience is going to be for everyone. They'll sell more cars, which means they'll make

more money, which means they'll impact more lives, not just the people they sell, but their family lives, for their kids, their team members on the team seeing that they're doing these things because you've got to be an advocate of it. A lot of people don't realize how powerful these tools are,

and so they actually use them, but then use them consistently because not everything works. You try it once, you got to do it every day,

you gotta do it all the time, and then you start to see results, massive results, Right. I love that. So what's been one of

the biggest things that you've seen result wise when it comes to digital tools that has been cooking into the pay dealers, franchise and independent. We have some

great news for you and your number one sales pro, your website partner with Team Mccess, we have the ability to pull you out of that cookie cutter merry go around and help your website and body what it means to do business from the highest quality production to the most strategic optimization. You want to help

you connect better to the ever changing market. To you and your team to

at least let us do a quick and free check up on your website.

We can't wait to hear from you to tea to the show. Oh gosh,

I mean, we're baby steps. So I'm a few months in.

I've been trying to really We talked about this in July. But I'm trying

to really understand everything that we're involved in. Right. It feels every time

I think I've got everything that covered, i find something else and I'm like, oh, here's another opportunity that we have. For me, it's been

a lot of the marketing piece and what we're doing with our messaging to our customers. Are we targeting the right customers. A lot of times when it

comes to marketing, we just blanking everything right, and that's not the case, and it shouldn't be the case. We should have a more personal approaching

market. So that's the big focus for me, is making sure that we're

having personal approaches to our customers. We're not just like shouting into ourselves to

everybody. I want to find some who's going to fit a shopper and it's

gonna fit what I'm looking to sell right and hit the community as well, so making sure that we're involved with the community events. You've had a lot

of events recently, and so it's just it's been a little bit of everything and trying to make sure that although it feels like chicken from the Waterhouse, it's in a good way. Because I am so excited that a lot of

times when we come into your group, there's sometimes a little pushback, right, and it's hard to it's hard to get your way in by my stores, and my teams are hungry for it. They're like, they want me.

I'm here and I'm so excited to be a digital dealer, but my heart is also wanted to be back in my stores because I know they want me to. I know how you are and out me feel that way,

but you also know the value coming here. That's important because if you don't

educate yourself, how do you educate your teams and show them what's happening you want to market More importantly, I love you for who you are as in you want to help your dealership to your community, but you want to hurt everyone and you know that it brings value. And I love that you're great

with airing all your secrets, all your tips, because really it doesn't really matter. It could be your next door neighbor. In the sense if you're

helping them, you're helping people. I mean you're helping people. It helps

everyone. I am in the full belief of the more you get, the

more you get in like and I know you give a lot you give a whole lot, and you've been blessed. You've got great support system. I

know your husband here. I love Deess. He he's a great guy.

He's here supporting you like a good supporting system should be right. He thinks

if you're in the world right and sees you doing that. But also he

gets to see the things that you talk about. And I guarantee Jesse if

he wanted to, and he can quice speak your language going out and talking about the things that you do too, because he is that passionate right now and he's so good to put a conversations. Oh, I guarantee it.

He was. Probably he definitely, he's probite in there. He is one

of the guys. And I'm excited that he's here. I'm excited that he's

part of what's going on. To me, he is part of an extension

of you, which is a beautiful thing. It shows when we get to

see him, we get to see you, which means we see the beauty of what you guys do with who you are. So that's to me,

that's vulnerability. That's what it's all about, being vulnerable. I try to

be as vulnerable as possible. That everybody's seeing some my backp lie what's going

on in my life? Because I want people to know that I'm a real

person that really cares about people too. And then if you feel that way,

of course you want to do business. Mark. We know you're enjoying

the show so far. We just wanted to quickly remind you about our partners

at fixed ops Digital and how they are automotives premier service marketing and technology company not only the cloud sponsors of the Car Guy Copy podcast, but they also served as your dedicated to 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 fixed ops digital dot com. Back to the show,

let's go. I'm not taking somebody who's sneaky or somebody who's shady. I'm

somebody who's wide open. You can find out. You can tell my wife

online. You can tell her and you guys know how to tell her.

So absolutely, you're child people, what's going away from home. This is

going away from home. Why they get it. They do, and they

see why we have so much fun. Like as much as I hate to

be and it's true, I hate to be away from our house, my bed, and my wife. It kills me, I love being there with

them all the time. So when I'm gone, I feel a little bit

of a guilt. But at the same time, I love the people in

the community that we're building here at these types of events and the way that we're looking to grow and push each other that I want to share that with my wife. I want her to see that because I want her to see

where I'm trying to go and feel that I'm not the only one doing it right. And when they come and they see that, the realization hits them,

and I think that they understand that there's more impact than just our dealationships.

We're impacting the nations. Really, we're impacting people. We're changing lives.

And if you can change lives, man, that's for filling that's right, love, that's right, And if you do that, life is great.

And it's so true to talk about the community. Right. We look

at you sharing what we're doing, and a lot of times we used to really keep it close. But why because if we're wanting to change this indusue

together, right, we want to move forward together. We have to share

what we're doing with work, even looking at who's with us, Like I have Ali who works for Trusted, who is in Houston, right, my dealers with in Houston. Ali's here. You got COVID from San Antonio,

like you got texts in the house And it's awesome because we're supporting each other and helping lift where we want this issue to go. Where we're at Texas

and Texas in the house, texasbody, Texas make noise. Okay, they're

they're from the They're from the Fliet part of Texas. That's cool. So

that's okay. There we go, There we go. There we go so

so real quick though, because you did say something there and I want to I want to hit it because we keep getting into this conversation like hearing it said you kind of it, but then you also just now said we have to be moving forward. So in that we also touched base on we're going

back, so we're inside of this weird almost seesaw paradox, weird place of we need to get back to selling when the truth was we never wanted we wanted it to change. Then our Guy Coffee podcast started one twenty twenty twenty.

We were coming in saying things needed to change. Then, before everything

transformed, when salespeople were salespeople, right, they could sell, they can work a customer, they could close a deal, and they can race that a bottom all of those other things. But now then COVID happened, salespeople

a little bit of a dormant muscle went in there and having to negotiate and really work a deal. But now going forward, which is still what we're

always trying to do, We're still trying to go forward, right, What is it that you do see evolving with the people, with the culture and with the relationship building, because that essentially is where we are trying to get this industry to go, that we stay focused on that relationship over revenue, are people over profits and actually building a community because you can't have family.

You can't have community without families, right, and you can't have families without a common language. So now changing the language around ourselves, changing the language

of how we view with people. What have you seen transforming in the way

that we start to actually now treat our customers because, let's careal, we've had customers paying a whole lot of money just because they said yes, right and not necessarily because we needed it, but because they were saying yes to it and we had it. Quick question, do you know what smart pixel

two point zero, Location IQ and Audience IQ have in common? You know?

I do. They are solutions that our friends and proud sponsors and when

data and analytics are brewing for automotive aneants, once again, you're right, my friend, and we want to invite all of our audience to to and one hyphen data dot com to see how they can help propel your business forward with the right data insight. Go check them out at m one hip data

dot com. Let's brew. Come on now back to the show. But

what do you see now as far as adjusting and in gooing forward and how we're actually concerned about the people that we have and those relationships that are building.

What do you see especially inside of a new regroup? So sells is

much more consultative now a digital right, so it's changing. We have to

go backward to the selling, but selling as a consultant and moving forward because we're digital now, so it's not like you're waiting for these people to come in your front door, which old news, right, they're not coming to the front door, But now they're really not coming to the front door unless they've done something online, and we have to be ready for that. They

want to know that we can pick up wherever they let off in that process.

And I think that's the big piece that people miss is they want to start all over. Okay, thank you for stopping in. Have you been

here before? When they say no, but I shopped online, make sure

you start asking those questions right also, like what part of the journey are you got to work on the process? Work? Can I help you?

Rather than go through trying to start it all over again. I just spent

twenty hours online. I just put I put in my app. Why are

you asking me what I needed to do? Now? I'm ready to talk

to you and to take the next step forward. And we sometimes just get

locked into like I need to do this and I need that, I need to doesn't do that, instead of like where is the customer and how do I do them? Right there? Right? And that part is a commitment

to seeing a fluid transaction with the customer because the way before, well, the way that it used to be, was that we would have to take them, plug them into our process of how we want to do it, and that's it. It couldn't change, We couldn't adjust, we couldn't mold

ourselves to the customer because we weren't concerned. I believe that the car business

from just not too many years ago was so stuck in saying this is how it is, this is how it's gonna be, and it's never gonna change, and we were committed to that right. Change Now it's like what if

your customers on step four and you step four right? So I think knowing

that they're actually step that's that's the thing, like they started at selection.

That's why we have so many great tools out there and so many great things that if we just use them and actually put the two notes in there we made sure we were supposed to be, the communication will not be broke down as your customer will feel like that we know what we're doing, right, but this big dealiship that has all these cars, but we can't even communicate with what's the problem. Right? So I love that you're seeing that,

and I love what you're talking about your actually or so on point, there's no you could be a salesman on the sales board, make a difference space someone you're talking about, and you're just so you know you got You're very impactful. You are multi faceted. Inside of a dealership, you just having

to find what you love and I'm glad. I think it's why I'm so

excited about this role with the Montron because I'm like, and now the marketing direction, I now have to say from a marketing perspective of how everything is kind of traffic, are we tiving with my BBC and my operational experience right and being able to hold it for the marketing I need to pull it all together and actually doing the people and looking happening the past, everyone I know and and just bring it all together. And I think sometimes we lose trying

to that because we're still stocking, driving the leads and driving the traffic and you have to think about house it's coming. That's awesome. Actually, you

are always growing solutions. You're always bring in your whole heart. She's the

smartest person I know. I swear she's incredible. So with that real quick

tell everybody how they can get a hold of you. They want a little

bit more of your wisdom and all and all of the awesome stuff. This

is like the cover of Digital Dealer magazine. I don't think I saw that

cover this month. I'm just saying, like this is the cover, saying

so, but with that, how do people get ahold of you if they didn't read Digital Dealer Magazine? The best way I always say is just catch

me on LinkedIn and find Ashley Cabasas on LinkedIn. Shouldn't be a message connectedly,

Yeah, sand touch, I love connecting comunity. How we build just

more connections and help each other grow right, and also just helping women and automotive women in color of automotive, let's get together because we cannot do this alone. I can't do this without y'all. We can't do this with our

family there. So it takes really all of us sticking together to help us

continue to push to the shreet where we know we wanted to. She so

awesome, she speaks so well. I'm surprised you don't have your own show

yet. You might too. I'm just saying so that being said, you

heard it here first. If it does happen, just saying. But you

said, get up a bunch of help from other people, right, So let's get those people right there that are watching, get them all, get them away through them. Your attention, your attention, your attention to me.

Needs your attention. I need y'all's attention real quick because we need to

be loud about to forget what was. Help us out and help us out.

David Long's in the house, everybody. We're gonna get a loud and

proud to get a bota's flock. So help us out. If you know

the moves, help us do it on three one two three, were good?

A fly, hey, growing growing, That's right, everybody, Thank you so much, appreciate it. Thank you for tuning in everybody. I'm

moving there as the car guy and I'm thrilling our stuff Rocky Road. And

you've been doing excuses on a car guy called the podcast with the one the only Ashley go past. Come. That's right, let's see you lay up.

Thanks tuning in everybody, so you see we're out. Pea