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"Never pre-qualify!" – The New Revenue Lever Inside Dealerships Bringing Clarity In The Back Office | Jake Cronin, CEO of Siro
"Never pre-qualify!" – The New Revenue Lever Inside Dealerships Bringing Clarity In The Back Office | Jake Cronin, CEO of Siro
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About this episode
Jake Cronin, CEO of Ciro, discusses how AI is revolutionizing the F&I office in dealerships by capturing valuable conversation data. He emphasizes that traditional prejudging of customers often leads to missed sales opportunities. By utilizing AI to analyze these interactions, dealerships can significantly improve their product offerings and close rates. The episode highlights real-world success stories, showcasing how data-driven insights can enhance profitability and efficiency in the F&I process, while addressing compliance concerns in the industry.
Topics:
ai in dealerships
fni office efficiency
data capture
sales process improvement
marketing attribution
compliance concerns
customer insights
penetration rates
profitability strategies
Today I’m joined by Jake Cronin, CEO of Siro.
We break down the massive “dark matter” problem in dealership sales, why most of the sales process has been invisible until now, and how AI is finally capturing what actually happens in the showroom and F&I office.
Jake explains how dealers are using real conversation data to coach faster, enforce process, and connect marketing spend directly to in-store outcomes. We also dig into adoption, consent, and why this tech is about collaboration—not surveillance.
This episode is brought to you by:
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2. CDK Global - Dealers—big news. CDK just leveled up their CRM in a massive way. We’re talking next-gen AI baked right into your daily workflow: Automatically following up with internet leads, surfacing buyer insights, and giving you instant AI-generated summaries of every customer interaction—no more digging through notes. And CRM Video is here. Record, send, and track personalized videos to customers—all inside the CRM. Check out the AI enhanced CDK CRM @ here!
3. Siro - Siro captures and analyzes every face-to-face conversation in Service, Sales, and F&I, giving auto dealers real-time visibility like never before. Stop guessing what's happening in the service drive, the box, or on the floor. Accelerate auto sales with Siro's AI powered coaching, learn more here.
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Topics:
01:31 How is data collected and used?
04:14 How are worker goals matched?
09:23 What laws must a business follow?
17:16 How can smart glasses help in a dealership?
19:14 How can computer screens be made simpler?
21:12 How will AI change finance management?
25:29 What is the future of the company?
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How is data collected and used?
How are worker goals matched?
What laws must a business follow?
How can smart glasses help in a dealership?
How can computer screens be made simpler?
How will AI change finance management?
What is the future of the company?
Select text to request an explanation
If you're offering it twice as much, but at 5x is the penetration rate, that means that most of the time that you were prejudging someone to not offer this product, they were actually more likely to buy in those scenarios.
And what that says more simply is people are really bad at prejudging customers.
Today I'm joined by Jake Cronin, CEO of Ciro.
Dealers have more data than ever, yet the most important part of the sales process, the actual conversations in the showroom and FNI office has been a complete black box.
Jake breaks down how AI is turning those conversations into game tape for coaching, improving close rates, tightening process adherence, and finally closing the loop between marketing and in-store performance.
A big thank you to our sponsors for making this episode possible.
CDK Global, Lotlinks, and of course Ciro.
And now let's get into the show.
Jake Cronin back on to CDG Podcast.
Jake, welcome back.
Thank you, glad to be here.
How's progress been since we last caught up?
It's been about six months or so.
How have you been?
About six months.
It's been a very impactful six months.
I think our team's doubled in size in the last six months.
And we hit like a...
I have seen that.
You guys are crushing it.
It's really exciting.
We're very lucky.
It's cool to be having stumbled into a product and idea that just was such a good fit.
And it feels like the world is conspiring to lift us up.
All the tech advantages that are happening makes our lives easier.
So it's fun.
I'm very glad to be fortunate to be in this position.
Well, I'll tell you, I have many conversations with different
auto tech companies and CEOs about what they're trying to do in this industry.
Not too many have a direct emphasis on the FNI office.
So I think that's pretty unique and interesting.
It changes up the conversation a bit.
But back to your point about your team has grown.
So one of the days where we were having a conversation,
I guess I got brought up in one of your team meetings because I look at my LinkedIn
and there's like seven connection requests in a span of like 30 seconds.
I'm like, all right, cool.
I guess there's some discussion happening at the office.
Yeah, we're like, team, this is the auto industry.
Everyone on the team needs to know about this.
We had a bunch of new hires.
And it's like, all right, like, like, comment, engage.
That's so funny.
They're doing their job.
That's hilarious.
Yeah.
Well, so Jake, I want to start off.
We chatted, like I said, we chatted mid last year and you were,
I would say you were in the early stages of working with dealers.
You made a lot of progress.
I know firsthand because you've spoken about it and what you're doing.
And the way I described what you're doing,
I spoke with a, I spoke to the prominent dealer in the Sun Belt the other day.
We were having conversation about zero.
And I said, look, the way I view this is there is all this data at my dealership,
physical dealership that isn't being captured.
And because it's not being captured, we are potentially losing out or being inefficient.
And what you've, you're looking to solve within dealerships is actually
capturing that data in your case by way of passive recording
and actually take it and use it to ultimately increase
PVR and PPD in the FNI office.
That's how I described it.
Now, where did I go wrong here?
Like you're, you're the CEO of this company.
So I'm just a car dealership guy.
How would you, how would you describe the opportunity right now in automotive
that you've been witnessing?
I mean, you might just be pitching it better than me.
That's nothing, that's, that's, that's pretty much spot on.
There's, there's a bit more breadth to it, breadth of capabilities,
but that's probably the core.
You capture this data, which I would say is the most valuable data in your company.
It's like, what are your customers saying?
And what is your business saying to your customers?
Like, I think that is the most valuable data that a business can have.
And now there is a way to capture it, understand it,
and then have insights and take action on it.
So when you're capturing this data, I'll get to like the how,
but the output is people are seeing PVR, PBD go up 15, 20% in one to two months.
It's just like, when you finally know what's going on,
you can finally make sure every FNI manager is offering every product
to every customer every day.
And the impact that has is incredible.
Also, there's another use case that someone recently was,
was talking about a big dealer out in Colorado.
They are, they're using it for marketing attribution.
So now you have this data and you just now trained as FNI managers to,
in conversation, do a little bit of discovery about how you heard about us
and then peel that layer back once, twice.
And then through Ciro can ask, hey, how are people hearing about us?
And it's not just Google ads, but it's like, oh,
this specific video is how they heard about you,
which then made them Google you, which then made them do this, that other thing.
So marketing attribution is a new one that I had to consider in the space yet.
It's, and they're seeing like really incredible results.
Like they've just, this, this was like not feasible before you started capturing the data
of what your customers are saying and what your business is saying to the customers.
How do you, how do you actually, I always go with the mentality
in everything in business, like when you're speaking with someone,
what's in it for me, right?
As in for them, when they're listening to hear you,
they're thinking like, you know, what's in it for me?
It's just like human instinct, right?
A change happens, whatever.
We, we do something.
That's just what naturally a human thinks.
How does this impact me?
So when you do something like this, again,
there's been a lot of emphasis and focus on the consumers and service and sales.
This is a bit different.
This is more internal, but you are seeing very positive results within dealerships.
How do you align the interests of the FNI manager and the dealer principal and the GM?
How do you do that without it just being like, hey,
we're looking to, you know, you know, glean this data.
Oh, and by the way, we're going to do it by,
by way of passive recording in a fully compliant way.
Like how do you get around that?
The, aligning the incentives.
Luckily there's already a system in place, compensation that aligns people.
It's just, you sort of need to pull it together.
So the dealer principal wants to sell more, be more profitable.
And then that comes all the way down to the FNI manager who also wants to sell more
and personally be more profitable.
And if they're both doing well, that's great.
The important thing for us as we're rolling out this tool to a new
large dealer group and people are hearing about it for the first time
is just giving that what's in it for them.
So what's in it for you to an FNI manager is this thing makes you more money.
It's very simple.
We show the stats.
This dealer group implemented this tool.
Two months later, they were on average selling 15% more products.
PPD up 15%.
The penetration rate we saw this one dealership, their penetration rate for maintenance
was 3%, 3.5%.
So that's like almost nothing.
They weren't selling this, selling this at all.
When we looked at the data, when the customer looks and sees the insights of what's going on,
they see that that this was only being offered in 40% of conversations.
So less than half of conversations had maintenance brought up
and they were only getting it into 3.5% of deals.
After two months, they were offering it every time, 80% of the time.
So almost every time.
And the penetration rate went from 3.5% to 21%.
So like an incredible jump in penetration rate of this product,
which then translates into more value for the whole dealership.
So this data allows you from the FNI side to ensure that you're offering every
product to every customer who can measure it for the first time.
And then if you don't measure something, you can't manage to it.
So that's like the simple what's in it for them is you use this thing,
you sell more, you make more money.
That's the very simple piece.
So you're saying basically dealers that are benefiting from this are capitalizing
or they're fixing, reducing that inefficiency in the FNI office.
So how do you, and then where's the delta from a dealer that says,
you know, my FNI office is not inefficient.
They're efficient.
I'm sure you've heard that a lot.
Yeah, my team is yes.
Yeah.
So how do you respond to that?
What's the delta?
You know how we always say,
like we always think we're better than we are in anything in life.
Like we think we're something, but reality is very, very different.
I'm healthy.
And then you discover that every morning you eat Nutella.
So like what is that delta that you're discovering with dealers,
with what they think they're operating and then how they're really operating
in terms of FNI efficiency in the office.
Yeah, we, it's kind of like, yeah, I'm good at basketball.
I'm the best one on my team.
It's like, like, have you seen LeBron James?
Like, are you that good?
Like there's just, there's another level you can be operating at.
It's evident in the numbers,
but numbers aren't enough to sort of get people to see things.
There's this like turning on a flashlight effect that we see.
It's like you have a certain level of comfort,
especially if you've been around for a while,
you're, you know, you've been managing the FNI department for,
you know, five, 10 years.
You have a certain level of comfort.
You feel like you have a finger on the pulse
because you've been doing it for so long.
But then when you start capturing the data
of what's going on in those conversations,
you realize, holy cow, my team actually has no clue
what our 360 protection is.
Like I just listened to a conversation
where someone was offering 360 protection
and they do not know what this product is.
They're selling it to people.
People think it's something different than what it is.
Like we have a ticking time bomb here for me to get a head up.
So can you go in and give me the feedback?
So you can get very complacent as a leader
that your team probably knows what's going on
because you know what's going on.
Like I know how to sell this product and that product.
They seem to be making some sales.
They know what they're doing.
But then when you really listen in,
when you watch the game tape, you realize, wait a minute,
there's actually a very large delta to your point
between what's going on and what's could be happening.
And that delta, when you start closing it,
you see that 15, 20% increase in the PPD, the PVR.
You see your pen rate for a given product skyrocket
because you're finally pitching it the right way,
explaining it's the right way.
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So how do you think about, you mentioned the C word,
I'll use a different C word, compliance.
This is, I was actually going to tell you,
what do you think is the most requested question here?
And one of the questions I received,
which I thought was hugely important
from a very large substantial dealer,
was talk to me about compliance.
That's a concern for people.
And there's multiple aspects of compliance here, right?
One aspect is the actual recording itself
and just having information like that out there somewhere
and be in the cloud.
Another aspect is, if God forbid, I get sued or something
and like, is this now, you know,
is disinformation used in a deposition?
I mean, who knows what?
So again, I'm giving you like the long tail
of outcomes that are possible.
But how do you respond to that?
Like what's your compliance protocols
and how do you deal with that?
Yeah, and compliance is what brought us into the industry.
So it was this dealer group who had just been sued
for improper disclosure
and making customers think they had to buy something
that they did by turning to a bunch of complaints,
turning to a very, very expensive lawsuit.
And they're like, we need a way to have film,
have data, have a trail of what actually happened
in those conversations.
Because right now we're stuck in a he said, she said.
And depending on...
I think it's actually the opposite.
It's actually beneficial, yeah.
To have a record of what actually happened.
Because in a he said, she said, it's too much uncertainty
and often doesn't fall the way of the business.
It's too much uncertainty
for you to be able to run your business on
and makes it a big distraction.
So now that you don't want the he said, she said,
you know what actually happened?
You can defend yourself.
It's kind of like an insurance.
If something does go wrong,
something gets heated, a customer is angry.
You have record of what actually happened.
So you can take the emotion out of it
and more objectively defend yourself to the customer.
And if it escalates, that's your evidence.
So that's like the reactive piece.
Then the proactive pieces right now,
you think you train your team.
Maybe you think you've got a really strong FNI team,
but you don't know.
It's like being that basketball coach who's like,
our team's like excellent in practice.
We've roleplayed, they're great,
but I've never watched a game.
Because why would I watch a game?
I know they're great.
But when you actually watch a game,
you'll see that things play out differently in real life
than what you might expect.
So the proactive pieces, having this data
so Ciro can monitor are your folks being compliant?
And if someone ever dips, then you intervene.
And your FNI managers can also check themselves
because sometimes you get sloppy.
Sometimes you have an off day.
Sometimes you're feeling the pressure
of hitting your number and you get a little pushy
and sort of step over the line.
And now you have a way to monitor that.
So that's why we got or what pulled us into the space
is Ciro has this reactive,
as well as his proactive compliance tool
for the FNI office.
But then there are two other questions you had about,
well, what about this data?
How do we know this data AI?
It's a very sensitive data.
And also, how do you think about the laws around recording?
So those are two other compliance things.
With the data, it's pretty straightforward.
We've got a DPA explains this,
but us and any other recording tools,
probably the same folks who are recording themselves
in the FNI office today
are probably using the same type of protections.
But customers own this type of data.
So any dealer group who's paying for our software or others,
they own the data.
The data is, at least for us,
all residents are held in the US,
SOC2 compliant, everything is encrypted at rest and in transit.
So the data is all secured from an infosex standpoint.
And then you redact all of the PII
or credit card information, social security numbers.
You have all that stuff redacted
so that as you're using these conversations
as trainings throughout a dealer group,
you aren't having that information get leaked between folks.
Since that's one other important thing to note.
But that stuff's all usually pretty straightforward.
The thing that gives people the most pause
when they first hear about this concept
is is it legal to record?
Which is a little funny
because most dealer groups that I've spoken to now
seem to already be recording in the FNI office,
video cameras or something.
Video cameras, some people are audio only.
So a lot of people are already doing it,
but for folks who are not recording,
like it is totally legal.
That's quite commonplace.
It's that the same laws govern in-person recording,
basically the same as govern video recording or phone recording.
So in most states, you can just record anything,
but there's 11 states.
So really 13, just two of them have more ambiguous laws.
13 states where you need to get everyone's consent to record.
Which means having, if you're in an office,
you have a sign saying it's recording.
Uber records car rides sometimes
and they'll have an app notification.
And to be extra buttoned up,
what we can encourage every dealer group to do
is remind people.
So some folks, based on their personal preference
to an organization, will say something like,
and by the way, we've got our note-taker running,
which makes sure that everything that I say is compliant
and according to our company policy.
To remind people that's like,
yes, maybe you've had a bad experience.
It's in their benefit.
It's in their benefit.
When folks are first new to the idea,
usually the first concern is like,
this will be so cool.
But something feels scary about data and recording.
It's like, well, let's walk through it.
Just this is just technology change.
It's the adoption curve.
It takes people time to get used to.
Yeah.
It's new.
So talk to me a little bit about insights about customer behavior.
This is something that has intrigued me
because you're capturing a ton of data.
And the dealer's aside, I am curious to know
what you've learned about the way consumers are buying FNI.
Like products are buying in FNI office.
Are there any interesting insights you've picked up on
from just having all these conversations
and being privy to it?
Like, have you learned anything like that?
I don't have an industry report.
I would love to get to the point where we can talk,
like industry trends.
What are people asking for?
What are they trending to or from, that kind of stuff?
It's extremely interesting.
I don't think we're at a critical mass yet
where that would feel fully representative.
Most of our focus is on not so much the consumer behavior,
but more of the, I guess, the final purchase decision
and the sales conversation.
And here, what we're seeing, like one anecdote
that this was very surprising to me.
And then to finish with the punchline first,
or start with the punchline, a dealer group increased
or was offering a product twice as often.
But they 5x'd the penetration rate.
So what does that mean when you do the math?
It's like, if you're offering it twice as much,
but it 5x'd the penetration rate,
that means that most of the time that you were prejudging
someone to not offer this product,
they were actually more likely to buy in those scenarios.
And what that says more simply is,
people are really bad at prejudging customers.
You'll prejudge someone.
It's like, oh, this person, they seem to be in a rush
or they seem to only want the basics.
They're not going to want XYZ product.
They're not going to want maintenance.
They're not going to want the 360 protection.
So I'm just not going to offer it
because I don't want to piss them off more.
But what the data shows is, if you just offer the product,
they are, the people that you don't want to offer it to
are more likely to buy than the people
who you would expect to offer it to.
Which is a reminder to sort of like, yep,
you're the FNI manager or your sales leaders
were right the whole time, like every product,
every customer, every time,
because you are terrible at prejudging
what people want and don't want.
That's a good point.
We always say, never pre-qualify, you know?
Let them take out, treat every customer equally.
So tell me about, on a similar tangent,
when it comes to actually capturing information,
I was thinking a little bit about the meta glasses,
the Ray-Ban glasses.
And what's your take on that within dealerships?
I have seen two things.
So I do know of one dealer who I've spoken with
who uses Ciro and the Ray-Ban glasses.
You're probably thinking of,
I'm blanking on the dealership now right now,
but you probably remember it.
I thought it was Tyler Slade.
He's actually in our office right now.
I was just talking.
Get out of here.
Yeah.
Get out.
All right, tell him to come in cameo.
And then the other one that comes to mind is just,
I've seen a lot of, or some adoption, not a lot,
but I've seen some adoption with Ray-Ban glasses
in the service department for video MPIs, right?
So when the tech is reviewing the vehicle,
the Ray-Ban glasses actually record it
and send that to the customer.
Pretty, pretty badass.
So what's your take on usage of Ray-Ban glasses?
Are you like leaning into that?
Is that something, or is that just like a cool, shiny object,
but not that useful yet?
Like, what's your take on that?
I mean, I've got mine right.
All right, there you go.
Yes, I've been playing with them.
I think they're really cool.
Actually, I'm not going to put them on
as it'll screw the audio, but I think they're really cool.
I am excited for the day when, instead of us recording
on someone's computer or phone or tablet for zero,
it's through the glasses,
because then you just get more data about body language
and whatnot, but I think we're just too early.
There's a few things to get done there.
The hardware isn't quite good enough
with just how smooth it is to do the upload
and for long form capture and battery life.
And also, the privacy laws get a little more,
it's just like a little messier
when you're also getting video.
And once the industry is used to recording
to capturing audio data,
then we'll want to introduce the video.
So I think we're early,
but I'm very excited about that future
where more information can be captured.
Okay, so now tell me about this.
One of the questions I've been asking lately,
many auto tech CEOs on this platform,
is dealers don't want to deal with another dashboard.
And so how do you minimize the amount of time
I need to deal with a dashboard or some other website
as opposed to my DMS?
Like how do you minimize that amount of time
for me on a weekly basis?
Right, like at the end of the day,
I view any dashboard as an obstacle
to me getting what I want, right?
I want to know how many cars were sold.
Sure, I'll go into the DMS, I'll run a report,
I'll get that information, right?
I think that's going to change very soon.
This stuff is going to be in real time,
probably through audio, we'll see.
So, but how do you think about the actual use
of the platform, right?
You've shown good results,
but how much hassle do I as a dealer have to go through
to glean the insights to get these types of results?
Yeah, it's like the dashboard's a means to an end of like,
I want the answer, and that's the vision,
but I need to think, I need to read it.
I guess there's two answers, there's like,
how does the dealer principle,
how do we think about their experience,
but also where does the value come from?
Because I'd say most, the value that we're driving
has nothing to do with the dealer principle.
Aside from them making the decision like,
yes, let's turn this thing on.
The dealer principle makes that decision,
we roll this out, and then it's the FNI director
who is making sure folks are using this,
doing some of the coaching, monitoring,
looking at the dashboard coaching,
and then it's the FNI managers
who are using this themselves,
and they're putting the most time into it.
They're using it to see what the folks are saying,
they're getting their own AI scorecard.
So that now the FNI director doesn't have to be the bad guy
of like, why aren't you,
why is your penetration rate for this product so low?
It's like, zero is, you get the AI scoring you
and it's telling you that you are actually a four out of 10
in explaining this product or handling objections or whatnot.
So now it becomes like a,
it's no longer an emotionally charged conversation,
or rather it's no longer subjective.
So it makes this objective.
So dealer principle flips the switch,
turns on the product,
and then suddenly your FNI director has a superpower
to monitor the team in a way,
to understand what's going on in a way
that they never could before.
We had this one FNI director who is like a,
like a handful of five different dealers,
and it's just like a lot of places to go between,
and is not spending the time riding along with folks
or being in the room really, really ever.
It's hard to, it's hard to do.
And when she got access to zero
and started dropping in to listen to conversations,
it was like, it was like I turned the flashlight on
and like my basement is a mess.
Spiderwebs everywhere, all these mistakes,
like people don't know how to explain this or that.
They're totally skipping this.
So like now I understand why things aren't working.
So to the question, what's the effort required?
What's the experience? Is this another dashboard?
It's like, well really the,
the dealer principle just sort of flips the switch
and then revenue goes up.
Because this makes life way easier.
It saves a ton of time from the FNI director standpoint.
And then your FNI managers are now able to get this like
one-on-one personal coaching from even just the AI every single day.
So it's kind of like, in fact, it's like a Michael Jordan analogy.
Like what if every one of, you know,
if your team's like a pro basketball team
or a high school basketball team and you've got your players and,
but you're a limited budget.
So you've got your coach, assistant coaches,
they can only put in so much time.
Now it's like every one of your players,
every one of your FNI managers in the field has this like 24-7 team supporting them.
How could I have done this better?
Would I miss there?
Like someone to monitor and make sure
that they are performing at their peak every day
and trying to lift them up to the next level.
So it's sort of like, what's amazing about this industry,
because we serve a bunch of different industries,
but what's amazing about FNI is I've never seen a place
where you can like have such a, such like a,
just like flip a switch and revenue goes up.
Like usually it takes a lot of work.
Usually when I'm selling zero to a new business,
it's like, Hey, this is going to make up,
this is going to be transformational for your business.
But like, are you ready for it?
It's going to take this many hours a week.
You have to be on for the ride.
Like you have to commit to this to get the results.
It's kind of like a,
like getting someone in on like a workout plan.
It's like, this is going to change your life,
but you have to invest in the auto space in the FNI office,
especially like you just turn the switch.
It's like a lot of leakage.
Yeah. A lot of leakage.
You just turn the switch and this thing,
increases revenue in a crazy way.
But there are cool ways that dealer principles
are using this themselves.
So I can talk to what is the,
is this a dashboard?
How do you do that?
This, we do have a dashboard,
but it's really not meant for dealer principles
to be looking at as more for the FNI director,
whoever's running your sales team, your service team.
What's interesting from the dealer principle lens
is using the sort of AI layer,
that kind of chat should be T on your conversation.
So I'm sure anyone listening
has used chat to be T or Gemini or one of the likes.
And it's really fun to be able to do,
like ask any sort of question, do research.
And if you upload some of your data,
then it's really cool for chat to be able to do analysis
on top of your data or whatnot.
What Ciro lets you do is ask questions
on top of all of your customer interactions.
So that's how you're asking things like,
Hey, what are customers doing differently
in this office versus that office?
How have combined behaviors changed last month to this month?
Tell me, show me the examples
where customers have felt like they had a bad experience
and why once leading that.
And then the most interesting one,
the one that's like tied to money,
which I mentioned earlier is,
Hey, tell me how people have heard about us.
Because in these conversations,
people are talking about,
especially if you train your FNI team to ask these questions.
Hey, how'd you hear about us?
Oh, Google, like, yeah, like, why'd you Google us?
You can get a few layers of marketing attribution,
a few layers of depth that don't exist anywhere else.
And they're now all being captured, cataloged,
so that as a dealer principal, you just have a chat interface.
And you can ask any of the questions and get data
and get quantitative and qualitative synthesis.
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So, I want to shift gears.
I heard, we discussed a little bit about the data,
we talked about compliance, spoke about the use cases.
How's it been, just talked us a little bit about
running the company in the last six months.
I saw you, you know, you're a pretty, you're a sharer,
I say as I call, you like to share stuff on LinkedIn online.
I saw you did a cool little breakdown of the economics
of attending a conference
and how much it costs and something like that.
So, I'm curious, what's it been like running the company
in the last six months?
Yeah, that's funny you say I'm a sharer.
I guess, there's just so much going on
that like it's hard to filter.
It's like, I can't consider different audiences,
like everyone gets the same thing, my employees,
our customers are just like, too much work otherwise.
But the sharer, to be frank, I hate posting on LinkedIn.
I absolutely hate it, but it's so effective.
It's so incredibly effective.
Because if you're not like it's just a place
where a lot of our customers spend time
and it's just a reminder that we exist
and little learnings get shared
and it person like humanizes the company a bit,
makes people feel like we're accessible,
reminds them that they can reach out to us
because we invest a lot in our support team, a lot.
It's just a reminder that we're here to help.
So, it's just too effective, I have to do it.
I can't stop, that's unfortunate.
But it's business is going really well.
I guess everyone here has just been to NADA,
but we're preparing to go to NADA.
It's going to be crazy.
My first time, our company's first time attending.
So, very excited about what we're getting into.
We're going to be showing up in a big way
and excited to meet a lot of folks for the first time.
It's we're kind of now no longer entering the industry,
but more so like turning into a,
I guess we're going from early, early adoption
to now like mass adoption.
And this is when a lot of folks
are going to hear about this for the first time,
this idea, this concept, this product,
meet our team for the first time.
So, very, very excited for that.
What do you have in store for NADA?
Many people listening here on this podcast will be there.
So, what do you have in store for that?
Yeah, so if you're one of the lucky people
who got like pinged on LinkedIn
or emailed by our by our sales team,
we're probably picking you up in a limo.
You're probably going to see Ciro
when you're booking a lift or something with our ads.
Oh, those are good ads.
I like those ads.
Yeah. I guess it's a cool idea.
We've got Lucia is running our sort of auto vertical
as like a rowing the whole business around this space.
And she's doing an absolutely phenomenal job.
So, Jake, when you think about the,
when you think about the upcoming, you know, year,
next six to 12 months,
the pace of just tech and AI has been crazy.
What do you, what's your prediction?
And what do you foresee for these next 12 months?
The next 12 months, the AI,
I mean, the AI has already gotten very, very good,
incredibly good adoption for business cases
is lagging a little bit.
The biggest thing lagging is the data.
So like even, even you, as you're like,
I'm sure you've played with AI and how you can use it,
but like what you can do is you can plop in transcripts
of all your past conversations, viewer data,
like any sort of output metric,
and you can pull in bios of the guests
and you can have AI tell you
how to optimize your next podcast.
It can tell you what leads you should have,
what topics to discuss,
what to stay away from next guests
and who are the engaging guests.
But that's a pain to put together.
You've got to sort of like assemble all this data
in one spot.
So you're searching around to your email
for some information,
doing some Googling online for some information.
So it's hard to get the data together in one spot
so that you can let the AI do its work
because they guys are very, very good
and the tools are available and they're not that expensive.
They're not free, but they're not too expensive.
The limitation is getting the data together.
So I think my prediction for this year
is that there's going to be a lot of tooling developed
to collect and organize data,
not necessarily organize,
but like centralize and make it accessible,
collect and make data accessible
so that AI can sort of do its thing.
Do its thing like however you're going to get value
from your data,
it can handle it,
whether you're answering questions,
reminding you about things,
coaching you,
advice on how to run your business better,
telling you who on your team is overperforming
or underperforming,
who's at risk,
how are customers changing,
how's the market changing,
how are people hearing about you,
what are your competitors doing different from you
because your customers are giving you
some of this information.
That's kind of a zero context stuff.
But AI broadly,
people realizing that data isn't just incredibly valuable,
but it's really valuable to have it all in a spot
that AI can be on top of.
It doesn't need to be super organized,
but sort of all needs to be in a spot.
Put it together and glean real insights.
And so that's broadly AI.
And then when you think about zero,
what do you have in store?
I mean, what are we going to chat about next time
we have a conversation?
What do you predict that conversation will be about?
Next time, I'm just going to have zero here,
and it's just going to talk to you directly.
So you'll ask my phone,
and you'll be like,
hey, what's going on in the auto industry?
Hey, what are customers saying about X or Y?
That's where we actually released Voice Mode
just a week ago.
So you can now drive around between spots,
maybe just going for a walk.
You can now talk to zero.
If you're an FNI manager, how am I doing?
What can I do better?
You can ask it stuff like that.
Even admin stuff.
It's like, did I get this right, that right?
Hey, can you summarize that conversation?
What do we cover again?
And then from the leadership level,
the dealer principal, if not a director,
you can also do your job from your phone,
at least a lot of it.
What are customers saying today?
Hey, anything interesting happened yesterday?
This is like if you're a dealer principal,
and right now you wake up and check up your dashboards,
like now you're going to be, as you're driving in,
hey, Siro, what happened yesterday?
Catch me up.
And it'll tell you how many conversations happened,
what's going on, who's doing well,
any sort of thread flags that you should be aware of,
any trends or anything changing.
We're very close to doing all of that today.
The piece that we're missing,
and this is what's going to come this year,
is having not just Siro talking on top of your
conversation data, but also having that in the context
of the rest of all your information,
the DMS information, the marketing information, et cetera.
Amazing.
Well, dude, you do some great work.
Keep it up.
And great appearance at NADA.
And thank you.
Thank you.
And you yourself.
You too.
Yes, yes, yes.
Jay Coyle from Siro AI.
Thank you, Jake.
Thanks so much for coming on.
Thank you.
Glad to be here.
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.
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