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Live at Digital Dealer Interbrew Series with Jonathon Thompson brewed by PureCars

Live at Digital Dealer Interbrew Series with Jonathon Thompson brewed by PureCars

Car Guy Coffee Dec 14, 2023 16 min
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About this episode

Jonathon Thompson shares insights from the Digital Dealer conference, emphasizing the importance of high energy and effective partnerships in the automotive industry. He discusses innovative marketing strategies and the launch of Mojo technology, designed to streamline dealership operations and improve lead management. The conversation highlights the need for passion in using tools and systems, as well as the significance of customer service in vendor relationships. Thompson's experiences and advice aim to inspire dealers to maximize their marketing efforts and foster a positive culture within their teams.

Topics: digital dealer conference automotive marketing mojo technology lead management vendor partnerships customer service dealership culture innovation in automotive marketing efficiency passion in business
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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 Cars. It's
n 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 car Guy Coffee dot com. Let's grew appreciate that,
and it's always fun to know that people know what we're about. That's really
something that we were trying to be very intentional about is making sure that people know what kind of people we are and what kind of people we like to connect and we love connecting with people like you. So tell us, tell
the audience, Tell everybody what is boom with you? How is the conference
calling people? What's happening with your business? Brother? You are an innovator
that we are honored to know. We want to hear more about what's brewing
with you. So let's step it back just one more second. We want
to talk about the interest part because I think that that is so important to really thank you guys for the all amazing because this energy and the partners that you guys put in the energy that you put out there in the world in the space. It's so important because this industry is amazing. Guys have seen
how many dealerships have you guys been in two thousands? Right? Career game
stories with low energy, low output, right everything high energy output energy is contagious and you guys are amazing. So conference has been amazing. They did
a really great job vendor partner layouts, because they are you got to treat my partners. You got an employee you hire, you paid money for,
you call them an employee. You got these vendors that you paid money to.
Those are technically inclusive partners, So that's really important. They've been a
fantastic job. The sessions, the dealer Vendor Exchange that they've incorporated Digital Dealer.
I think it's super impactful. It gives all the partners an opportunity to
really speak about themselves, how impactful things and really just interact with some of the dealers one to one Hey dealers, Car Guy, Coffee podcast and certified Solutionaries are honored to be part of team. 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 dealer partners in the market.
They are one and a hundred percent CG see it proved and when you visit them at BenQ dot com you'll see a whole hill of beans worth of reasons why TVANQ let's prove. So I'm really enjoying that and some of the
speakers that they've had have been incredible. A boy Ostillo Lexus of Paper Clients.
He partnered up with Juana Mingez at Speed Advertising and just fantastic love this session. At the time he tweaks it a little bit, but he's always
talking about optimizing leads in the BBC and police. That's one of the biggest
struggles that most doors have. I get all these leads pas campaigns, they
don't hit their goals they'd like to. Then they go, hey, should
we spend more money on getting more leads? I'm like, hold on,
So stepping back to what we're doing and I'm CEO of Automotive Marketing Grews.
We also have a virtual call center, Experience Development Center and Automotive Marketing Grews.
If you launched in November twenty twenty, we're touching one hundred and two scores right now. Now we've got eight marketing directors. The marketing coordinators also
support them, so for every ten dealerships, they coordinate the quarterback, all things marketing and work with the partners all the way through to execution. But
I tell you that's been fantastic. The innovative part of what we're doing is
our Mojo technology, which you know, I haven't even really talked about that much, but it's gonna be something that I home, so I you know, hey, got mojoj is when you create something that has great purpose and impacts others, create something that has purpose and impacts of it. And with
Rojo, our goal in that solution was automotive marketing grew is being a virtual CMO, being a fractional CMO marketing guer the time and energy that market.
Even our team or marketing directors that work dealer groups and dealerships right now, they spend a lot of time building reports, analyzing reports, and then when they're analyzing the reports, they're trying to figure out like is is this good or bad? And then they got a customer and saying, hey, I
saw this, and you have to learn it over time. You don't even
know and you've got so many dashboards, so many partners, and then if you do find things, and you got to communicate it out to the vendor partner, and then you've got to followup with them all the way through the execution and make sure that they change or modified or do so. Mojo doesn't
pay dealers, franchise and independent. We have some great news for you and
your number one sales pro, your website partner. With Team mxcess, we
have the ability to pull you out of that cookie cutter merry go round and help your website and body what it means to do business with you from the highest quality production to the most strategic optimization. We want to help you connect
better to the ever changing market 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. Back to the show Mojo those reports, analyze the reports,
and then will communicate out to partners when there might be an opportunity.
And what's fantastic about it is there's so many people with reports and dashboards and really great technology. I'm not down for exactly. The difference is having the
ability to compare your dealership, your group of dealerships, your dealerships of excuse me, your group of clients as an agency, how they compare to others.
What's wild is dealership across America. They use different partners, different providers,
They've got different solutions that they use, and they grew right, and it's gonna be really interesting being able to compare a store, like what's my cost per lead, my costpers sold, my closing rate for a specifically provider, what's my retention rate monthly out of every month like most stores? Hey,
let me repeat, customers you have you don't know, So then the question is, even if it was five percent, even if they did know, is it a good number? Is it a good number? How does
it compare against other stores, against your brand of stores? More importantly stores
and similar demographics and so anyway, but that's what I'm excited about innovation wise.
From a platform perspective, we are going to our one hundred and two a MG stores will be the first clients to be on it, beat it up, beta tested, and then we'll move it over and then I was so fortunate last year to have the acquisition of experienced developments and by Solitary Matt.
Yeah, come on, he's been great. Yeah, he's been a
great partner. But man, there was a couple entrepreneurs build business right,
it's you got to say focused or nothing will get done, or and do things that you're great after your passion. And I'm really passionate about automotive marketing
and technology, and I'm really passionate and good at automotive pulser. Those are
don't know. I started as a phone agent at a small little company called
Eli CRM but actually literally back in the cul center twenty four seats and I was an agent. This is back in two thousand or two. But I've
always sad that passionate and I always respect the art forum a phone etiquette and phone stills. We know you're doing 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 proud sponsors of the Car Guy Coffee podcast, but they also serve as your dedicated 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. That's wild one of my one of
my good buddies that I was just hanging out with last week. He's a
private independent dealer. He sells highline luxury. I'm Lamborghini's for our that's fine,
place of the bravest whatever you name it on that pa. Maybe I
well, I don't know, maybe I can ride in it with him.
I'll ride in fred. But I was with him and he was talking about
his sons and his sons are gonna help run his business. And one of
his sons is seventeen junior high school. And he's like, I'm like,
what is he doing. He's like, he works at a golf shop.
I was like, golf shop. I was like, Brona, get him
at the culture. He goes, man, I would love that because it
starts on his phone. Now. Yeah, So, anyway, the industry
is tough right now, and so for a m G and XDC, our goal is to help dealerships be as a fish with the dollars they spend inadvertants and the leads that they're generating, making sure there's quality or being handed as best as possible. So both of the companies live off each other and try
to help leaderships be more efficient. And then as Mojo gets released again,
it's you know, I was talking to marketing director last night. I was
explaining Lojo to him. I said, because man, and he has seven
stores and two I said, you know, the goal is for people like you to not have to be on as many calls, to not be building as many reports and being asked the same questions and then trying to figure out what's little good and back, so you can spend time but have a phenomenal onboarding process to new hires, or having a phenomenal process for anniversaries and birthdays and building great culture in the stores, for being out there in the community.
Because what are you going to, man, Oh, I don't have time to help have an amazing onboarding process because I got to be on these vendor calls or I gotta build these reports, And that those guys and those people in that role, if they dedicated more of their time and energy into the culture of the store. That's what you ask any marketing professional, especially
that's a marketing director CMO and dealerships. They're passionate. It's help build a
great country because I guarantee all of them are doing somewhere like we want more people to want to work with it and shot in automotives and so I love that. Passion is a big part of all this. Like you said,
you can have a good product, but if your product doesn't have passion behind it, no one's gonna hear about it. No one's gonna want it because
they're not gonna be excited about it. That when you bring it into market,
you put it into a dealership, If you're not excited when you're bringing it and the team is not excited about it, it's not gonna use it.
So excitement and all that has to be involved in all passion, really believing in what you do, but bringing it with such an energy that everyone is taking it and caging right and using it to become bettercause tools will be more effective. I see really great tools get put into places that just didn't
have a passion on it, and when you when they got in there, they just fell great tools. They fell to the wayside because no one thought
about it, no one was excited about it. But then I see tools
that were just okay with passion and we're used and utilized and they were thought of the greatest. But then you see a tool that's right up the street
whatever you want to call it, next toe, even a better plol, but no one wants to use it. Literally at one thing, how often
we hear someone news to work contager look like a positive way like that, because it's true we want to have passionate. But I was talking to somebody
that they asked me a JT. Would you I'm not gonna name any company
as would you use x y Z CRM if you started at story day would you use that CRM or something else? 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 m one Data and Analytics are brewing for automotive and amos. Once again,
you're right, my friend, and we want to invite all of our audience to go to m 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 hyphen Data dot com. Let's brew Come on now back to
the show. I would use the one that my team would use. Whichever
one my people will know what exactly. That is some of the best advices
that you can give anybody. What will they use because even if it's less,
then and they use it, and it's gonna be way better than a great product that never gets to I'm telling you it's crazy as to talk with our classes. We're trying to be efficient right now, got things are compressing.
I still got a couple more months of that, but I don't know.
But he said, hey, man, I'm trying to save money, and should I turn my CRM down? Should I make it go up and
try to find something cheaper? You gonna say five hundred bucks a month for
some of your teams. Still not you. You're never got to train and
you gotta learn a new product. What burn you're trying to go into green
damage problems? If anything, maybe try to step it up. But that
is the tools and systems. To Fred's point, that is one of the
biggest things that we try to push on is dude playing your partners. Yeah,
make sure the technology. Don't try to hire a partner and then just
go, I'll pay him. There's about a month and you're not doing your
part. But it is tough. And the thing is, sometimes you selles
pros that are inside the vendor side deal a partner side. You're over selling
it. You act like it's a plugging plane. It's gonna work. Well,
it's a two way street. They have to use the tool. They
have to be educated on the tool and then encouraged to use it. And
then really, at first you're gonna probably even have to skip them a little bit to use It's weird to say it. Sometimes you have to do that,
get him using it, and then when you get one testimony, a good case study inside the store shows hey, look how far this salesperson, this leader did when they were in here, and by using this tool, this is what they were able to do. Now everyone will be on board.
Sometimes you need that. Sometimes you have to have that testimony to make
it work, and it's an important part of what we do. So make
sure you encourage those people. If you bring a tool in dealers, don't
just think it sounds good because there's a lot of cool, shining things in here and great. Yeah, in all honestly, all of them, probably
a lot of them will probably work for you, and they'll probably make a difference in your store, but you have to apply what you buy. If
you don't, I believe got a little bit every single one of these things, every single of those Partners programs will work. I agree with you.
That's why they're here. They're representing you work it. That's right, and
that's a thing that we are loving right now. And let's just be real.
It's just but it's real. Yes, it's not. You work it.
And if you have the tool, use it, If you have the connections, if you have the people, you have the access, use what you have, because a lot of times your answer to the question that you're having that keeps you from using the tools you have is one phone fall away to your partner, right, whether it's the vendor, whether it's somebody on the inside that can say, hey, GT, I don't know how to really use this, right, please walk me through this a little bit more.
And if we educate our people, because we're getting educated, we have everybody understanding. But when there's a disconnect in what we're doing, nobody does
anything, and we get stopped and then I'll flip that back. So you
got that on the on the dealer side, but on the partner's side.
You know. Another conversation I had this was today at breakfast and uh An
Agency because we worked with twelve fourteen agency partners. Okay, because you know,
I like to see the variety. I want to see who does what.
And sometimes I even help other partners get better from what they do.
Want not because it's gonna make our industry better, right, can you go?
But but but the thing was he asked me, said who do you like the most? And I said, man, I tell you what.
I can't really pinpoint it, but I named a couple of names. And
he said why. I said, because the customer said so. Just the
same way that we want dealers to be engaged the customer service, the proactiveness of the partners is so important. Even if you have one of those like
automated tools that like, oh you just turn it on, it just goes does thing. It's got a I this was she hardy. When you do
that, I'm gonna tell you what. Don't call that client for two months
because you think the systems doing his job. Don't call him for too much.
On the third one, i'd heard from cutting this off because I heard ye. Anyway, I love what you said there, and I think that's
a great way to leave this note. Right here is the customer service above
all, and you can have what we have all agreed. You said,
you agree to that all these products here are great products, but not all of them have great customer service. I would I would say that what you
say, I'm gonna say it.

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