Pharr on Recruiting, Ferri on Inbound Challenges, Westrum on Team Dev | Daily Dealer Live
Car Dealership Guy Podcast
Pharr on Recruiting, Ferri on Inbound Challenges, Westrum on Team Dev | Daily Dealer Live
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Car
Nissan Versa
The Nissan Versa is a small, inexpensive car that many people buy when they want a new vehicle without spending a lot of money. It's designed to be simple and affordable.
Car
Kia K4
The Kia K4 is a new, small car that is priced to be affordable for many buyers. It's meant to be a good option for people who want a new vehicle without spending a lot of money.
Car
Kix SUV
The Nissan Kix is a small SUV that gives you more space and a higher seat than a regular car. It's a good choice for people who need extra room for passengers or cargo.
Car
Nissan Sentra
The Nissan Sentra is a small car that's easy to drive and park, making it a great option for city living. The latest version has a nice look and comes with modern features, which makes it a popular choice for people looking for a reliable vehicle.
Brand
Ferrari
Ferrari is a famous car brand from Italy that makes very fast and expensive sports cars. They are well-known for their racing cars and have a strong presence in motorsports.
Brand
Chevrolet
Chevrolet is a popular car brand in the United States that makes many types of vehicles, like trucks and cars.
Brand
Buick
Buick is a car brand that makes luxury vehicles, often known for being comfortable and stylish.
Brand
GMC
GMC is a brand that makes trucks and SUVs, often built for tough use and outdoor activities.
Brand
Stellantis
Stellantis is a large car company that owns many brands, including Chrysler and Peugeot, after a merger.
Brand
Harley-Davidson
Harley-Davidson is a famous brand that makes motorcycles, especially known for their powerful and stylish bikes.
Company
Asbury Automotive
Asbury Automotive is a company that sells cars and provides services for them, like repairs and maintenance. They have many dealerships across the U.S.
Term
add-on
An add-on is something extra you can buy when you get your car serviced, like getting a tire rotation along with an oil change. It helps make the service better and can cost more money.
Term
fixed ops
Fixed ops means the parts of a car dealership that deal with service and repairs, not just selling cars. It's important because it helps the dealership make money even when car sales are low.
Term
fixed absorption
Fixed absorption is a way to see how much money a dealership makes from services and parts compared to its costs. If they make enough from services, they can cover their expenses without relying only on car sales.
Term
variable operations
Variable operations are the parts of a car dealership that change based on how many cars they sell. If they sell more cars, they make more money, but if they sell fewer, their income goes down.
Concept
routine maintenance
Routine maintenance is the regular care you give to your car to keep it running well. This includes things like changing the oil and checking the brakes.
Term
oil change
An oil change is when you replace the old oil in your car's engine with new oil. It's important for keeping the engine running smoothly.
Company
Jiffy Lube
Jiffy Lube is a company that quickly changes the oil in cars. They are popular for their fast service and are found in many places.
Term
OEM
OEM means Original Equipment Manufacturer. It refers to the company that makes the parts for a car, usually the same company that makes the car itself.
Term
value for the money
Value for the money means getting a good deal for what you pay. In cars, it means how much you get in terms of quality and features for the price you spend.
Brand
Suzuki
Suzuki is a car company from Japan that makes different types of vehicles. The Suzuki Rodeo was a popular SUV that many people drove years ago.
LIVE
Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Daily Dealer Live!
Hi, I'm your host, Sam Dark, and welcome to this space where Automotive comes together to learn, to share, and most importantly, as you know, to execute.
Thanks for choosing to be here on this Monday, January 5th. It's 2026, and guess what?
Welcome to this 100th episode of Daily Dealer Live! Can you believe it?
100 episodes in solid, high-value content!
So what do we have today on this 100th episode?
So today, you'll hear from operators and CEOs in the trenches breaking down how top stores build teams,
stop leaking revenue, and win in pressure-tested markets.
If you're a dealer or GM who wants an edge in 2026, don't blink.
This 100th episode of Daily Dealer Live is for you.
And first to today's auto industry headlines.
First up today, new vehicle affordability has taken another hit, as Nissan confirms that the Versa,
America's cheapest new car, will be discontinued.
The reason? Compact and sub-compact cars have been steadily losing relevance,
and for many shoppers, lightly used or certified pre-owned vehicles with better features and similar payments,
make more sense than a bare-bones new sedan.
Now, the cheapest new car on sale in 2026 thus far is the, get it, Kia K4. It's just over $23,000.
However, Nissan still sells two of the 10 most affordable new vehicles in the US,
including the 9th generation Sentra, which starts at $23,845,
and the Kix SUV priced at $23,925.
Looking ahead, the company's keeping Versa alive in Mexico and other markets,
where the compact sedan segment is still large, and pricing and regulations make the car more viable.
Next up today, new vehicle retail sales ended 2025 on a soft note,
but dealers still closed out the year with higher full-year retail volume,
and slightly better pricing discipline, according to a new report from JD Powers and Global Data.
Full year retail sales volume finished up about 4% against 2024,
even after a choppy, uneven back half due to tariff fears and the EV tax credit expiration.
December itself was soft. Retail sales are tracking down more than 7% year over year.
EV shares slid to just 6.6%, and monthly payments hit a record $776,
despite only modest price increases, and between the lines longer loan terms
are doing most of the work to keep deals together.
What's the bottom line here? Well, lower interest rates, more lease returns,
and OEM production adjustments to tariff and EV realities could help boost demand
and reduce pressure on margins in 2026.
Next up today, President Donald Trump's administration enacted a host of policies in 2025
that impacted the US auto industry, but there are more measures left on his agenda
that he's likely to pick up in the coming year, 2026. The biggest wildcard is the USMCA,
what was supposed to be a routine review is now turning into a high stakes
renegotiation with Trump openly signaling frustration with Mexico and with Canada.
Layer tariffs on top of that and suddenly factory sourcing vehicle mix and pricing
pressures are back in flux, especially for models that rely on cross-border supply chains.
Beyond trade, the administration is also lining up moves on autonomy,
safety mandates, critical minerals, and environmental rules,
everything from easing AV deployment to revisiting automatic emergency braking requirements
and fighting California on emissions. What's the big picture here? Well,
if 2025 was about dismantling old rules, then 2026 is about rewriting those rules.
Finally up today, Amazon is catching heat on Capitol Hill as it pushes further into auto
retail, this time over used vehicles listed with open safety recalls. In a letter sent to CEO
Andy Jassy, three US senators argue that Amazon auto shouldn't be selling cars with unrepared
recalls and say telling shoppers to check NHTSA themselves is just not good enough. However,
Amazon is almost certainly operating within current federal law. Used vehicles can still
be sold with open recalls and Amazon's marketplace model sits in the same gray zone
dealers and listing sites have operated in for years. That's why this looks less like a legal
shot and more like a pressure play. The senators backing the letter are also pushing legislation
that would ban the sale of used cars with open recalls altogether, which would be a big burden
for automotive and the entire industry. And Amazon, they point out, makes a very visible target.
At the end of the day, Amazon auto grows beyond new hundays
into used cars, financing and more brands. It's stepping into the same regulatory and
political crosshairs dealers have lived with for decades. And that's a wrap on today's industry
headlines. Yuli, happy new year. Happy new year, my friend. Great to see you. We're back. It is
2026. It's awesome that we're here. I'm going to tease something for Wednesday, Yuli. So
over the holiday, some of you saw a post from me on LinkedIn. You can check out my LinkedIn profile
if you want. And I had a little beef with vendors, not quite servicing maybe in the right way
through the holidays. Not for today, but I'll bring that up on Wednesday. Guess what we have
for today, Yuli? Today, we're launching something big. You remember when we talked about video
technology in automotive? There are people who are elite, and there are people who are still
trying to figure out what the heck is video technology. But a separator between elite and
ordinary is the ability to connect with a customer using video technology in 2026. So guess what we
have, Yuli? We have a contest. It's the CDG Co-Video Dealer Video Excellence Challenge.
And this is a cool contest because we're going to give dealers, dealerships, salespeople, sales
managers, service, BDC, fixed ops, FNI, everybody and anybody in automotive that uses a video to
communicate and connect better with your customers. We're going to give you a chance to compete in
the month of January. You ready for this, Yuli? I was born ready. All right, let's go. Here's the
deal. Create a video. So if you're a salesperson, you're a service writer, you're a service technician,
you're a BDC agent, you're a finance manager. Create a video in which you connect with the
customer in some way, shape, or another. It could be a walk around. It could be a product demo. It
follow up. It could be anything and send it into CDG. And here's what we're going to do. We're going
to take all those submissions. We're going to take the top four videos and we're going to allow the
top four. We're going to tell the world who those top four videos are, who won top four. And then
we're going to have them on the show to talk about how they created the video, why they created the
video, and then guess what the funnest part is? In the final round, after we have our four winners,
we're going to do a cage match with those last four to create the ultimate video of all videos to
connect with the customer. And guess who wins in all of this, Yuli? I mean, we all win, of course.
We all win. Yeah. I'm going to tell you something, Yuli. I'm going to figure out a way to get Yosi
to come to Ziggler remotely or whatever and launch the contest within our group. And we're going to
compete, hopefully every auto group in the entire country competes. And we're all going to get to
see the best of the best out there. Kind of cool, right? It's really cool. I mean, we always talk
about this steel, sharpened steel. So I'm looking forward to seeing what other people are pushing
out there. So will you be a judge, Yuli? I'll be a judge. I'll be a judge. Yeah, I'd like to be a
participant too. Oh, wait, are you going to make a video? I would love to make a video. What would
you make a video of? What are you going to do a video of? I'm thinking there's a there's a nice
Ferrari showroom I want to do a walk around on. Yeah, come over. We I know where that one is.
I know where that one is. So you're going to be a judge. I'll be a judge, although I'm going to
recuse myself from judging on any Ziggler stuff like this, I obviously would vote us the best of
everything. So I'm going to I'm going to play the the middle on that. But Yosi will be a judge,
we've got another surprise judge. And then guess what else we have? We have the people's choice
element. So all of you, our daily dealer live audience will also get a vote on the best video
out there. And we're all going to win. So you know, don't stand by on the sidelines get involved in
this. You can submit the video by clicking the link in the show notes below. There's also a
submission site at cdg.fyi cdg.fyi. But I would actually go to clicking on the the the show notes
to to submit your video. Again, up to two minutes, it can be about anything you want as long as it
helps you communicate with the customer. Alright, so I'm excited to see what we get. It's going to
be fun. We'll talk to our guests today a little bit about that as well. And thanks to all the
comments. As always, you can post your comments across cdg social media platforms everywhere.
I love this by the way yoga car says 100. Next stop 1000. I like that. Yes. Paul Salisman says
congrats on hitting 100 episodes and Lauren Klein says to all of our listeners happy 2026.
So if you're in a dealership right now, you're a salesperson, your whatever role you are,
post into the comments. Are you in this thing? Are you going to come join us for this?
This video competition to crown the winner of the video that connects best with a customer
January 2026. Sean Hopper says yoga cards beat me to it. Yoga cars is fast, Sean.
Yoga cars is super, super fast. So, all right, well, should we dive into today's content
and interview? So, all right, first up today, COO, partner of P4 Automotive, Scott Far. Welcome
to the show, Scott. Hey, Scott. Thanks for having me. Scott, thanks for being here. So,
tell us a little bit about yourself. How's biz and tell our daily dealer live audience a little
bit about you, your group and what you do there. Yeah. So, we're a relatively newer group. My
partner Leo started this company about 10 years ago. And really, it started with three smaller
stores in Columbus, Indiana. And he's got a vision to move forward and to grow and to
make an impact in bigger markets. And we connected over the summer was definitely not looking to
connect with anyone, but kind of fell for Leo's charm and his energy and everything that he was
about. And it's been a really good, really good start. So, the last 18 months, he's more than
doubled the size of his group. Went from three stores to nine. Wow. So, yeah. So, he had planned,
but he's jumping on good opportunity. So, I was going to say expansion at that scale,
tripling the size like that three to nine is massive and culture is ground zero for a successful
organization. Automotive industry is no difference. How do you preserve culture when you expand so
quickly? I think really visibility and having a dealer like Leo that he lives in all of the
showrooms. That was one thing when he and I were talking about kind of joining forces and me being
a partner with him on this journey was I'm extremely intentional on the relationship side
of the business. I don't think there's anything more important. You could process yourself into
profits and wins or you can relate to people and get on the ground and work. And Leo provided that
as a foundation. And I think that's something I've always done in my career. I'm in an office to do
this podcast. I'm not really here very often. Yeah. So, growing that fast, you're hiring a lot
of team members probably. So, you're gaining through acquisition and you're also intentionally
hiring out there. What's the hardest position to hire for in January 2026? And what are you
doing to overcome the challenge of hiring for that position? Yeah, quite honestly, I mean,
the easy answer here is to say technicians because nobody has enough of those, right?
I think we figured that out. You just got to pay them. But really and truly, the biggest,
the toughest spot I think recently has been sales managers. Okay. And there's a,
the value that a sales manager brings to the floor is maybe the most, I don't know,
unappreciated value. They do a lot of the work for the finance departments. They're coaching,
they're training, they're mentoring, they're making deals happen, they're appraising,
they're managing inventory, they're doing a million, million things. And I think it's no
secret in most cases, the last seven to 10 years, in a lot of situations, they make less money than
finance spot that they came from, right? So, right now, we're trying to talk the best finance
managers that are really good at closing, that spend a lot of time at the desk trying to help
us test deals. We're like, hey, you want that promotion? It's just going to take you about a
30% pay cut. So then when you go out and try to recruit from the outside, which isn't really a
practice that you like to do, but I think you have to, you always have to be open to it.
It seems like, you know, the post COVID bubble burst has put folks into fake
pay expectations, unfortunately. Or they're all chasing it, everybody's chasing a title.
So, you know, we're having really open, transparent conversations with people.
So, it's interesting, you bring up something great. I love this, by the way, you remember
the old commercial back when great taste less filling, nobody could figure out which it was,
great. I don't even remember it was a beer of some sort, right? That debate in automotive
is one of those eternal debates. Who generates the FNI revenue? Is it the sales desk? Is it the
sales person? Is it the finance manager? What save? Yeah, I've done this for a long time.
And I take a lot of pride in both the finance piece. I think that's the one thing that we get
to control nowadays. So I'm extremely cautious to take any of the performance away from finance,
because I think most of the men and women that are doing that in these dealerships,
they're absolute studs. But we demand and I expect that my sales managers be the best
in that realm. And we like sales managers that can get their hands dirty and get the toughest
deals done and can manage the inventory and put the customer and their needs on the right vehicle,
maximize the opportunity, the gross opportunity, and do all of that really, really fast while
coaching the sales person through word tracks and how to say those things. So again, I'm not
taking anything away from finance departments. I mean, again, they're the big revenue generators,
at least with P4. But I would say that the sales manager is probably more important to the entire
wheel. Yeah, you know, what's interesting is I agree with you, like I think FNI is a great path
to come through finance before you become a sales manager in learning to lead without having a title,
because you don't get a higher fire anybody as a finance manager, you sit there and you generate
income on an intangible product. And then as a sales manager, you're leading a team,
but but everybody's got to be pushing in that same direction, right? So as you sit down with
that sales manager, toughest position to hire for, how do you figure out is this person a good
candidate for this role? Yeah, so, you know, you got to check a couple boxes for me to be a sales
manager. I almost I would call them leaders, more than managers. And, and quite honestly, I think
leadership, I coach on this a lot, leadership versus management, those are two completely
different things. 100% agree. Yeah, when you have the right person that is really good at both,
they end up running a store for you and become your gentleman, right? Or your fixed directors,
or, or somebody that you put in charge of a department, no variable ops director, because
they were really good at everything. So you give them a few stores to operate. I think those are
becoming fewer and far between, because the management side of our business has become
difficult. It's it's not really just A's and B's and C's anymore. Now you've, you've got to check
a million boxes every day. There's 1000 things to do. You know, recently, somebody said, what are
the top five things that your manager should be looking at every day? Yeah, what are they? I mean,
I wrote down like 30 things, narrowed it down, and then I did like an NCA March Madness Bracket
to get down to five, and I'm going to give you six, because I can't, you know, and, and I don't know
that this is right. Everybody's listening to calls going to be like, no way, this doesn't make sense.
So let's provide context for this. If I'm a general manager, a general sales manager, there are
things that I have to watch every single day. I've got to be cognizant of. And you're going to state
what are the top five. By the way, I've had this exercise with GM's and sales managers I work with,
and it is a debate. So give me your, give me your six. Let's see what you got.
Well, I did, I got to five. Okay, context. But, you know, this is, if I'm running a store or
department in a store, this is, I get in the morning, these are the things I'm logging on my
computer to look at. And I'm probably, I'm probably looking at it every single night before I leave
in most of these things as well. Number one, I'm going to my OEM site and I'm looking at my CSI.
I want to find out where our surveys are, what surveys are still outstanding. And if you're
doing really well and actually passionate about winning in the CSI game for sales and service,
you've got somebody in your company that's tracking these. So we have a superstar that works for us
named Emily that put together what is like the simplest spreadsheet ever. And I've been almost
30 years in the business and never had a spreadsheet like this. And I got here and Emily's like,
Hey, I'm building this for you. Do you think we should use it? I'm like, Oh my God, where have you
been? My whole family? Shout out to Emily. She's a superstar for us. But CSI, I think this is the
first thing. It's the easiest thing to look for. You go to the same spot every day. You just want
to know that I get surveys in and where we are and then attack based on we won them or we lost them.
Number two, for me, this was drilled into me militant style way back in the day when I started
with Fantile years ago. There's nothing in your store that affects your production more than
appointment stats. So every single day, sales and service, I'm looking at our appointment data.
Today is set in confirmed numbers. Yesterday is shown results and missed appointments.
And then tomorrow, how are we set up today for tomorrow? I believe really, really at a high
level believe in same day next day appointments. I can high five somebody on a Monday when they
set an appointment for Friday or Saturday, but I'll re high five them and fist found them on
Friday morning when they get it confirmed. I don't love appointments five and six days down the
road. Those are tough. Number three is the production reality. This is where we're currently
at versus where we're tracking versus our forecast and versus I always track what the stores records
are in like every single KPI. So whatever the highest volume new cars we've done, whatever the
highest used, variable gross, finance gross, I track all of that stuff because I'm a little bit
of a psycho when it comes to data. So production reality is the number three. Number four, I believe
in being a really good partner to the accounting department. So deal flow is really important.
Contracts and transit, right? CITs, but also open our roads on the server side. That's something
that that is shared every single day in our company. And everybody that that needs to be on
that email thread is on that email thread. And it's like a constant conversation for two or three
hours. So unfortunately, we email people to death with that stuff. But it's easy. You don't have
to respond if you're on top of your stuff. So deal flow, getting deals upstairs into the office,
into accounting. We've got payoffs to make. We've got floor plan to pay off. We've got all these
things I don't like when deals are sitting in finance offices for three and four days.
That just doesn't that doesn't work. So we've got some pretty strict rules and policies. I can't
say that they're always followed. I think our folks do a really good job of trying to follow
those though. And then, you know, one thing that's really big here that I don't know was big to me
prior to joining Leo, his his experience, he grew up in the fixed side of the business.
So he was a started doing window tinting details and moved his way up to service advisor service
manager. Yeah, his dad was a master tech actually. And Leo was his boss. So they used his dad wasn't
allowed to say son at work. And he couldn't, you know, that was pretty cool. A big Honda store for
Penske. So, but the trade and recon variants. So we have a very specific, very detailed report
that, you know, in the auto, the little blue box where you can go in and put all the data points
of what each vehicle needs and recon, we train our appraising managers, anybody that appraises,
we train them on how to really, really get into what our recon should set up. But we have
centralized reconditioning. And what that does is it really speeds everything up. There's no
wait time for the recon department to wait for the sales manager that's off and at a golf course
and can't answer, you know, nobody can approve the MPI and all this stuff. None of that happens
as long as they're spending less than up to the amount of the money that we set up in recon
within the guideline of the, you know, 121 point inspection or depending on the level of
certification that we're doing. What's your average variance on that report? And what's
unacceptable to you? I think that's fascinating. Yeah, it's actually under $300. And I would have
never guessed that when I got here and Leo told me about this, I thought this was probably a
train wreck. It's, it's absolutely not. These folks are disciplined. They do a really good job.
We've got somebody that manages this, this recon variance report. And I would tell you that right
now, we just looked at this because we're, we're kind of going through as we, as we jumped into
the Indianapolis market, we're jumping into some other buckets of used cars. So we're redefining
what our reconditioning standards were. It was either kind of a P for select or an as traded
that that was it. So we're going to, we're redoing all of our buckets. And that's,
you know, to come. So any of my team members that watch this surprise, but it's coming,
but it's all really good stuff. But I lost my train of thought on that. But the
So let me ask you this. Do you think there's a risk in tracking that variance and holding it to
about 100 bucks of under bidding on customer trade ends of saying, you know, getting too
conservative and not aggressive enough, getting those the best trades, which are customer service
lane off the cars? I don't because we're not holding anybody to this. We're not,
we haven't set a bar that said, Hey, we only want a $100 variance. Yeah. We haven't do this.
All this is doing for us is giving us a snapshot of what it is. But I remember what I was going
to say is as we're going through this, we are only needing approval on three and a half out of every
10 vehicles that go through a recap. And two of those three and a half are purchases off site
that we're not not trade ends. So you know, we're yeah, auction cars or stuff that we've
got coming in. So we're, you know, I feel like we're doing a really good job. I don't know what
the best of the best is. I couldn't tell you what the standard should be. It feels like only being
off by 300 bucks is it feels like we're winning. What's your average recon in that area? 1650.
Yeah, 1650. So eager case as online average recon bill nowadays is 1000 plus. So based on
his take that 1650, that's high. That's good. And then eager says, What's your use car pack? I'll
audience, you know what, our audience asks tough questions. So
all right, I'll I'll I'll over share our use car is $1,000. Okay, all right. So you've got healthy
recon. So you're putting a lot into reconditioning that probably drives your CSI. I mean, obviously
use car, a satisfaction relative to new car. The first item you quoted as being important to you
is CSI. Why did you put that number one, like you've got to sell cars in order to, you know,
keep the doors open, the lights on. But CSI is number one, even behind, you know, appointments,
and then even behind tracking year over year a month over month. So for those that may not know,
P four has nothing to do with my last name or Leo's last name starting with the letter P.
So P four stands for the four principles that guide us every day, which is process, passion,
product. And it's okay. And it's in that order. And this isn't about, you know, the again, a layup
answer or discussion is all man, people are everything people are everything. That's that's
that's true. But having the right people are ever is a right now people process passion is a big
one. So we just think we have a bunch of people that just do the right thing. We don't make it
brain damage for them to do their job. A culture of CSI, if you're winning, I would tell you look
at your sales team, look at your service advisors. It's a younger crowd. I'm 46 years old. I used
forever in my career. I was been the youngest guy, right? I was the youngest salesperson. I was the
youngest finance guy. That was the youngest. Now I look down, like we're hiring people that were
born in 95. Yeah, it's like, I'm surprised by the same thing in my world. Yeah, it's crazy. When did
I become a when did I become the older? And but a culture of CSI when you're trying to make sure
that you take care of the customer, especially we can have a discussion on millennials forever.
But don't want to come to work and do a job that they're forced to that they don't believe them.
What is something that everybody can rally behind taking care of the guest, taking care of the
customer, then our internal employee satisfaction. There's no way to engage employee satisfaction.
But to me, there's not one thing more important. I have it written up on my board.
You set the standard and be the standard for your team. There's nothing more important than team
member satisfaction comes first for us. Then employee satisfaction profit is just that that's
one of the four keys. That's looking at the that's looking at the the score. They talk about it in
atomic habits all the time. We brought it up numerous times on the show. You don't focus on the
score, right? You focus on the process and the score takes care of itself. So it sounds like
you guys are focused on on the right KPIs. The atomic habits is my favorite book. I'm not a big
reader. I'm not a big reader. It's one of the only books that I've read more than a couple times.
So a lot of great comments coming in online. Paul Salisman says, I just said the other day,
realized that people born in 2000 could be 26 already. 26 born in 2000. Igor Kay says,
I'm old now two 33 years in the biz. And Kamiram says, and if you're using V auto for pricing,
do you come out of the gate with aggressive pricing? What V rank does appraiser use when
bringing this car in? Well, we don't have again, we try to not set too many things in stone. We
want everybody to be able to be an entrepreneur. We're going to price the car based on day supply
and availability for the first 15 days. We again, we're not real hard pressed on anything. We let
we let the folks in the store try to run their store. But we are definitely pricing to market.
We're not waiting to price cars to see what recon costs. If you're doing that, then you're just
pricing from cost up and good luck keeping on wasting time. Yeah. So as we wrap up our time,
just a couple of questions relative to the different brands you have, you've got Chevy,
you have Buick GMC, you've got CDJR. So you've got Stellanus Ford Nissan. And you've got Harley
Davidson as part of the group, I believe. What brand are you winning with the most coming into
January 2026? What brand is just crushing it for you in your market? And why?
So let me just touch that Harley Davidson piece first. We that was purchased a couple of months
before I was here. When he told me he had that, I'm thinking, Oh, well, Leo, you have to be a Harley
rider. Nope. No, he just his answer was, man, I thought it would be fun. So he brought an operator in
named Angela and he came over and built a team. And that thing is winning. I mean, the store was
never on the map. You couldn't you couldn't find any ranking report where the previous store was
ranked. And she is got to be one of the fastest growing Harley stores in the Midwest. She's doing
an awesome job. We feel really, really good, super bullish on that. The brand that we're doing the
best with, I think that's pretty easy for us as the GM brands. So our store in Muncie is just
killing it and Buick GMC, we're wildly sales effective. And then we've got a great Chevy
store in Columbus. And then we just bought these two Chevy stores in Indianapolis and Lebanon.
Lebanon's a smaller town, smaller market, but that thing's undoubtedly getting rolling.
But the big store, we're calling it the big store. There's 86 Chevy dealers in the state of Indiana.
And I think we finished fourth last month. Wow. In our first month. Now, we're nowhere near the
first three. We got our brains kicked in, but there's a big line of delineation and separation
there. But we're not chasing the number one spot. I mean, the other stores that are in those spots,
the Andy Moores and the Hare Chevy, they do a fantastic job. They run great businesses. We take
care of their customers and we're just going to participate at a high level. So just as we wrap
up last last question here, what do most people miss about the Chevy brand that's allowed you to
get top five in a state that is so heavily populated by GM? Yeah. Are you talking about
dealers or customers? You know, you're winning in a way that not everybody is. What's something
that you're doing right now that is causing you to be able to do that? What do most people miss
about that brand that that I would say about? Yeah, I would say I wish I could say it was
inventory, but we have no inventory yet. We took the store over with 27 new cars on the ground.
So we had some coming. We have a lot more coming now. So we, you know, we should be
in the triple digit Chevys. I would say maybe hopeful this month, but don't bet against us in
February and March. We have plenty of inventory coming. But honestly, we're just making it easy
on the customer. We have a goal that we want to be the easiest place to do business for the team
member and for the customer. We talk about it every day. Literally that quote is said
every single day on a call in a physical conversation. Our internal quote is every customer
every time. If you are here at one of our dealerships with the intention to buy a new Chevrolet
outside of a bank saying that you can't, there should not be a reason. So I've given all of my
teams a green light. I'm not going to beat them up on their PVR. I'm not going to beat them up on
profitability. I'm not reading them up on anything. Sell the cars. All the rest will fall into place.
So, you know, we were profitable on our new cars. We obviously crushed the SFE Stairstep last month,
but we also ran a little over $3,500 a copy in finance. And we did it. So Stairstep is a topic,
and I lied. I'm going to do one more question because you brought up Stairstep. It's a topic
we've been talking a lot about on the show. Some dealers love it. Others don't like it.
You've got a couple brands that are deep into Stairstep. The Chevy, Hyundai, whatnot. What's
your take on winning in the Stairstep environment, Scott? Well, it's real easy. Just make the decision
you're going to participate or you're not going to matter to you. Yeah. That's it. I mean, we're
chasing sales effectiveness all the time. And if we're sales effective, then we want to move that
by 10%. Then we want to get to 20%. Most of our stores are 25 plus percent retail sales effective.
Obviously, the stores that we just bought were less than 50% sales effective. So there's no number
that matters more than putting our license plate and sticker on the road here. So we're going to
take every deal that comes across our plate if it's doable. We're never going to say no because
of the gross. Yeah, I love it. All right, Scott Farr, COO partner of P4 Automotive. Thanks for
coming on the show. Sharing your perspectives. Love to have you back one day to hear as you continue
the success. So I appreciate it. Thank you guys very much. Thanks, Scott. God bless.
That's healthy recon, Uli. Yeah, that's healthy. Less than I thought it would be with all that heavy
metal on the ground. I mean, 1600 a copy with a lot of that trucks. That's yeah, it seems like.
I wonder if the heart I should ask them is Harley bringing down your average, but I'm sure they
don't recombin the same facility. No, probably not. Probably not. So all right, well, let's talk
Stream Companies. Today's episode is brought to you by Stream Companies. Dealers, stop chasing
incentives. Retail ready from Stream Companies. Updates your offers in as fast as four hours
and keeps them compliant. Stay current. Feed out competitors and drive more leads. Headed to NADA.
Visit us at booth 3113W. By the way, I love that always. Remember that booth number 3113W. You
get the map and you got to go on a hunting expedition. I'm sure the Stream Companies booth
is living large. Or learn more at streamcompanies.com slash retail ready. We appreciate Stream
Companies for supporting today's content, including that great conversation we just had with Scott
Farr. I thought that was super interesting. Yeah. So Uli, let's not stop here. Let's go to Stefan
Farie, president and CEO of Car Wars, a company name, which I love, by the way.
Great name. What a great company name. Stefan, Car Wars. Welcome to the show.
Hello. Hello. Hello. I enjoyed the last session. That was pretty good. Scott gave some really nice
tidbits. I really enjoyed to hear that he came from a Larry Van Tiles store background. That was
Berkshire Hathaway now. Yeah. Yeah. We are. So for your audience that you may not know is
that is one of our board members, Larry Van Tiles. He's had this organization for 20 plus years.
So a lot of good story and backdrop on that one, but it was great to hear his name.
Well, as we begin the conversation, you're president and CEO of Car Wars. Tell us a little bit
about how's biz at Car Wars and maybe a little bit about yourself, how you got here and what
you're doing at Car Wars. Yeah. Thank you, Sam. Julie, pleasure to have you here or have me here
and happy new year to you both. Happy new year. I got here, been here for two years, three months,
and I started my career with Asbury Automotive Group. Back then we were only 90 stores,
still very connected to the group. Really pleased of how back in the day at Asbury,
we signed Car Wars to handle all the traffic management of the phone calls for all of our
dealerships. So having been a end user of their product and now having the opportunity to lead,
it's been a great opportunity for me. So it's super exciting. Last year was an awesome year for us,
25. We are looking forward to a much better and less ice NADA than we all experienced last year.
That was awful last year, by the way, for everybody that ended up making it there.
I don't know if we'll ever go back to New Orleans. Vegas just seems like such a great,
easy place. Good weather, easy transportation in. That's right, and they're designed and set up for
it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you get a get out and you move on. Well, hey, tell us this.
You've talked a lot, Stefan. Dealers in our world obsess over digital leads. We ask everybody,
hey, who's your best lead provider? How's it converting? We want to know this. All your data
says the phone is still the highest intent channel. Why do so many stores ignore the phone and treat it
like a black hole? I think some of it is a bit of intimidation, to be honest with you. Being in
stores, I have seen the directors of First Impression not only have one person at the front desk,
but maybe even three people at the front desk. I would ask any dealer principle, the simple
question, how many rings at your dealership? Is it okay to have it ring before it's picked up?
Is it one? Is it three? Is it five? In today's world, it's got to be one to something, one to two,
one to three. But here's the reality. All the data we see and report out on this show is we are really
bad at picking up that phone. We just as an industry, like in service, that eight, nine minute
wait average wait time is insane. Yeah. So think through that right now. Think about the dollars
spent every month to make the phone ring. And what do we choose to do? We choose to point size,
point blames. Listen, we're a privately held company. We are one of the few assets that wasn't
sold to BHA because Larry believes in this product so very much. You wonder where the
Car Wars name comes? It's because we allow dealership groups to compete against one another
or internally against different brands. It's about Chris. And if you've been around the business a
little bit, you've heard of Chris. Connect, request, invite, set, and pursue. And we do an incredible
job of trafficking and monitoring how this happens. There's some things before the show ends that I
want to make sure that we cover because everybody uses these two new letters of the alphabet,
like it's some magical. Oh, let me guess. AI. Yes. What do you want to tell us about AI?
So what I want to tell you is that transcriptions is something that our business has been doing now
for 12 years. Okay. 12 years, we have been transcribing the phone call from beginning to end.
And when you transcribe it from beginning to end and you take this data and then share it with your
audience, do you remember in the day, or at least I do, when you say, well, I don't want to listen
to these phone calls? Well, we don't want you to listen to those phone calls either. We want to help
you take action. And so the words that really need to be discussed inside of our world of AI
is really call containment and add-ons. What does that mean? Okay, great. Call containment is when
conversational AI takes the call from beginning to end, cradle to grave with complete assistance.
Now, one of your questions may be, well, that seems easy enough, Stefan. Why doesn't everybody
understand that? Because there is reluctancy in the automotive space. Historically, we trailed
many industries by a few years, unfortunately, but the real reality is this simple. If we can take
a phone call for a dealer, and if a dealer doesn't want the call to be handled immediately,
then tell us when. Are you okay with two rings? You want one ring? You want four rings? Do you
want just from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m.? Because it doesn't matter. You've already spent the marketing
dollars, so the highest intent. We know that your client is not calling to ask how your health is.
Trying to spend money at your dealership, so what do you want them to do?
So from your perspective, Stefan, what's the answer? What is the number of rings in today's
world where AI is becoming more of a force within rooftops? It's a great separator
in speed to answering the call, whether it's by a human or by an AI agent. How many rings?
Well, I like two because if I'm a bit of a traditionalist, I got started in this industry
by a gentleman who helped form Asbury Automotive, and he likes the front desk, the directors of
first impressions, to be able to talk. But none of us like waste and elimination of marketing
dollars to not pick up the phone call. So I like two. I'm a big fan of two. Two seems good.
And when we talk about containment, that cradle to grave to end the phone call appropriately
is massive to get it to a solution. We are booking north at some brands because we do do
independent OEM brands on who and which customers adapt better to conversational AI.
All of this data, we do so many white papers. I'd be reluctant if I didn't tell your audience.
Go to carwars.com and go read some of our white papers. And when you asked earlier,
Yuli, about what an add-on is, an add-on is when we take a shop code, like an oil change,
and we have our conversational AI by the name of Kerry, book an additional service,
whether it's windshield wipers, tire rotation, brakes, and it gets done there on the call
without any assistance. We have some stores averaging over 35% add-on with zero human interaction.
So where is the most pressure in automotive today? You just had a gentleman on the phone talk about
fixed ops. We can go down the path of fixed absorption and how important it is for the
dealership. But the real reality is that's the hardest job in the dealership is to work on the
service drive, servicing the customer that's in front of you without ignoring them, giving more
time and opportunity to serve those that want to spend money with your dealership to keep the flow
going. The reason he's selling so many huge cars is because he has no new car inventory. So we need
we got to find the middle ground, which is if you increase fixed absorption of your dealership,
it puts less stress on variable operations. And if we can put less stress there,
then we're doing something better for your clientele and for the dealership.
So Stefan Yossi, the car dealership guy himself, came into the comments listening to today's
show. He says, there's a cool delight to picking up in under two rings. If you can implement a
process that allows for that, it positively surprises many customers quote, oh, wow, you answered
fast, close quote. So one thing we hear a lot of Stefan in automotive is, hey, customers hate AI,
but your data as you described this suggests different. What separates the AI that works and
creates this delight that Yossi is talking about, and then the AI that fails to deliver?
Sam, great question. The question that you're really hitting on is not that people dislike
AI, they dislike bad AI. We were not first to market, but as a company that's recording over
900 million minutes a year, guess what? We listened to everybody in the industry,
and we have heard and recorded every single one of their calls, good batter and different
that they're on our lines. And so when we built ours, we knew what the consumer did not like off
the rip and what we would not construct and what we would construct. If they asked to get out of
the phone call, because people, some people, there's a couple of AI properties, not even an
automotive, they might be with some large airlines that start the consumer off with two straight
nodes. Like, no, I'm a diamond with Delta, please, no, don't ask me, do I want to be called back?
You start hitting 0, 0, 0, 0. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Hope, hope, help, help, get me out. But the real reality is, we've learned to build the systems
we have today by listening to everybody in the space, and not all are created equal. We are so
different than everybody else in the space. Sam, you said it yourself just a second ago,
there's so many in the space. We started as a telephony company, routing all phone calls
in traffic for the dealerships. It's what our specialty is, it's what we do. And so our dealer
advisory board challenged us in 2023 to build our own conversational AI. We are now working on
outbound and outbound texting. As long as it is within the safety and confines of what
10 DLC and stir shaken is asking for, I think you're going to see a lot more pressure come down
those paths as well. And I think you'll start to see many of these startups that we all talk about
will have pressure because they're owned by private equity. You don't want me to go through
private equity versus privately owned. So, Stefan, you're getting comments in our social
media comments. Ben says, Stefan's the man kudos to him and the team for innovating
and disrupting themselves. 900 million minutes recorded. My only question is, what kept you
from hitting a billion? I mean, if you're going to do 900 million, you might as well click the
billion button. In all seriousness, looking ahead a year or two, if I'm a dealer and I haven't
implemented conversational AI into my operations, into service, into sales, into other parts,
how am I going to be separated? How am I going to be kind of left behind if you think a year or
two? It's evolving so quickly. What's going to be my problem a year down the road?
Sam, I think I would ask you as an operator yourself, how do you want to handle your marketing
dollars that you're spending if we all know and agree that the phone call is the last intent
before I transact? Yeah, I want that phone call answered. And I want to answer it well. And I do
realize, Stefan, that some of the actual employees that work for me, we talked about this earlier,
those born 2000 and later, they're 26 years old. They're used to snapping and tick-talking and
tweeting and LinkedIn. They don't even like LinkedIn or Facebook. Yeah, there needs to be
training on the phone skills. And so it is a compelling argument to get that second ring picked
up and handled more efficiently stuff on. Yeah, Sam, but in usually what I want y'all to think
about, it's really based upon the dealer's needs. And I think there's roles in the dealership that
have yet to be defined. There are certain groups across the country that we are partnered with
that are testing it and then have someone who's operating all their telephony behind the scenes
and really invested into A-B testing, trying different patterns, maybe first ring, maybe second
ring. What if somebody's on a heat case with a customer, how in the world would you not want
that call picked up right away? You want it picked up, yeah. You want it picked up right away. Or
like every dealer principle says, if they make it to my door, I'm giving them everything. So why
don't we try to handle the pressure of the moment at the moment instead of waiting at the end to
get hit in the face with a bigger problem? And it's interesting, Stefan, if you select two rings
for the pickup, and it's a sales call, now all of a sudden, I'm competing as a salesperson to
pick up that call or I'm competing as a BDC agent to pick up with that call. And competition makes
us all better. Right? Yeah, yeah. So think about this, we have two different versions. One is a
scheduler that can book appointments with every known, well, not every known, because I'm sure
there's already two that have been created last week that I'm not familiar with, but every major
service, you know, XTime, Micarma, Update Promise, the list goes on and on, but we are
integrated with all of them. But then we have carry receptionists to back up your main receptionists.
And as the phone tree is set up, if your consumers we build carry, if they say operator, help, or
any disconcerting word, guess what? They're going to somebody directly. And the uniqueness of
understanding how a phone system, forget AI, because this is a bigger story. It's how the
communication and the telephony inside the dealership happens. What happens if all my service
advisors are with somebody? Yeah. Right? Shouldn't they have a do not disturb, or they kick them out,
or they get first ring, or give them third ring. But I'm telling you, we just did a study in October
of 2025, over 500 rooftops. And we saw that nine out of 10 consumers of dealers who missed their
appointment called another dealership in market. Yeah. So say no more. Don't say that the company
that you're that you're missing your fixed absorption number. Don't say that your service
ROs aren't high enough, because I assure you that the majority of dealers are missing real
opportunities in dollars to convert. This is a conversion thing. So Stefan, last question and
honest, the producers are pushing me, we've gone way over. But I love this topic. And I think it's
super relevant to everybody in 2026. Lauren Klein made a great comment in the comments. So she says,
this is the solution to replace AI rather than develop these young people. They're the future.
And you're not saying replace them with AI, you're saying competition will create a better
experience for the consumer. And by having a, a strategy that says, Hey, if they don't pick up
on the second ring, we're going to roll it over to automation, or we're going to send it to a
different attendant. That's your strategy. It's not to replace it's to train and bulk up the way
we respond to the consumer fair, fair. Sam, Larry van Tile tells me at every board meeting,
always look for opportunities to do business, which means you should look at your current
operating platform, and always make event creations that create better events for the
people set the dealership. Period. Yeah. Stefan Ferry, President and CEO,
Car Wars. Thanks for being on the show, sharing your perspectives today about all things,
answering phones and responding to the customer. Thank you for being here. Sam, thank you so much.
Thanks, Stefan. Thank you. Thank you. By the way, you leave some great comments in the,
in the chat here. Eager case as we train, we, we dealers train sales staff 10 to 12 steps to
close a deal, but no phone up skills. We need to change this customers, judge dealers the way
customers get spoken to. And I agree 100%. We've got to do better in automotive. So,
you know, January, we've got our video contest, we're going to crown the champion of automotive
video connecting. Maybe we need to do like a phone skills competition sometime later on in the year
or something like that. You know, when you pick up the phone, a, I think one of the cool things
about agentic AI and voice AI that's really good as you can barely tell it's AI, like it gets human
emotion. It will get you apologizing to it if you say something that wasn't nice or whatever.
But, but I agree, Eager. Thanks for saying that. Like we still need to learn and hold ourselves
to a high standard of being able to speak on the phone and connect with that customer on the phone.
So, January is the video competition, and maybe we need to look forward at some point
to a phone competition. But let's, that's exactly right. That's exactly right. But, but let's move
on. And to everybody remember, you can go into the, you can go into the, the, the chat and our
notes for today's show. You can get the link to upload your video again, a two minute video.
We're going to be excited to crown the champion for, and then we'll go into the cage match
to see who is the winner of these four. But before that, let's turn to Micah Westrom,
General Manager of Ramsey Mazda. Micah, welcome to the show.
Welcome. Good to be on. Thank you for having me.
We love the setup. We talked about it a little bit before. We won't get into that. We want,
we want to ask you the signature question, you know, how's biz? And as you're answering that,
tell us a little bit about yourself, Micah, and where you're at, what you guys are doing.
Yeah, absolutely. Business is great. I tell you what, it's, I had the opportunity about
three years ago to come into Lithia Automotive was never with a national organization of this size.
I was exclusively with private dealership groups. And it's been really, really fun to see exactly
the autonomy that's given to you through Lithia. I've really enjoyed specifically the focus they
have, especially here in Urbandale, Iowa, and I'm at Ramsey Mazda here, the focus on exactly what
your previous, previous guest was talking about fixed absorption. I mean, that's really been what
we've hung our hat on here at the Mazda store. I love that. And let's pull on that thread from
that conversation, because there's still a lot of questions that need to be asked. So if you're
focusing there, what are you doing? Are you leveraging any technologies to kind of solve
this problem that we're talking about, you know, the phones going unanswered in the service
department, maybe services not being offered consistently? Yeah, absolutely. That's, you
know, it's, it's easy at times to look and see your data because we use car wars as well,
but to see your data and wonder, Hey, why are we not on the phones? Why are we not answering? And I
heard at the time from a platform fixed operations manager saying, why would we not 90% of the time,
especially in the service department, they're calling to give you money. I mean, at the end of
the day, they're calling to transact with you. So I started observing actually within our store,
and I saw my advisors were consistently with guests. This wasn't a, Hey, I don't want to,
this was, I'm taking care of that person that's directly in front of you. And I don't care what
area of the business you're in, when you have someone that's flesh and blood right in front of
you, you want to handle that person's issues. They're trusting. You want to be a good steward
of that trust. So what's your ring count? As Stefan said, we have our set about two as well.
Yeah. So we use an AI system within our service department, they can still get through to the
service advisors, if they have some of those more complex questions and even have it set up where
they can get there to their specific advisor. But we're finding a lot of people just want that
ease of, Hey, I just need my problem solved. At the end of the day, I need to get in connection.
I need to know that, you know, folks have lives going on, and they need to be able to
check off that individual, check off that issue, check off the fact that
that's done after they make the call. Yeah, they don't want to be on the call for nine minutes. We
reported the data from CDK saying that customers calling service departments and automotive,
I don't remember the exact stat, eight or nine minutes, which is insane, right? So
in your, it where what caused you to see a need to utilize this AI service in your
service department? And what's the bailout prompt? How does a customer get to a real
live person if they don't want to continue with the with the AI in the process?
Yeah, absolutely. So one is, you know, the typical like, Hey, let me talk to my advisor
or a specific name of an advisor will kick you over. But the main reason we found is most folks
were not, they weren't asking complex questions. I mean, we, it's so many times it's a little bit
like sales or service or whatever it may be. In the beginning, you kind of believe, Oh man,
there's this vast world of all these things a guest could ask for. The reality is they're calling
for three or four things. And most of them were just setting up their normal service. So we just
needed to meet that need where the guest was reaching out to us. Yeah, routine maintenance,
add on stuff, like they're talking about my brakes are making a little squeak. And it's
right. We think about it in the sales department. If your sales rep is sitting with a customer,
we tell them, don't you even look at that phone, you dedicate yourself to the customer
that's sitting there, right? So we think about it a little backwards in the service department,
because now you're pulling your hair out. Well, not yours, you have great hair, but
you're pulling your hair out going the phone's ringing, man. Like, I know you got a customer
in front of you, but that's money on the line. It's great, you know, good on you to be forward
thinking, you know, to be solving these problems. Have you seen a quantifiable lift in, you know,
your dollars per RO and things like that since adopting a technology like this?
Yeah, that was that was part of really a multi pronged approach. We put an emphasis in 2025 on
really focusing on making our service department as efficient as possible. And specifically from
the dollars and cents standpoint, we set out within Lithia, we wanted to be the number one
net to gross percentage in the company. And so we really had to, if you guys have ever seen,
oh, gosh, they talked about it just recently, the books escaping me. But it was actually this,
the chef talks in this book and unreasonable hospitality. That's what it is. That's awesome.
Great. We saw him speak Mazda actually hired him in to talk about the process of becoming that
Michelin three star restaurant. And one of the things he talked about is you have to really
dive in and interrogate your process. And so, frankly, I had a my sister-in-law who ended up,
she decided to get her oil changed and two or three times I caught her going to a local Jiffy
Lover LF or whatever the case may be. And I said, why don't you come to why don't you come to my
dealership? Yeah, and she's like, Oh, I didn't think of it. I just thought this would be quicker.
And so immediately I thought, Well, shoot, if she's thinking that other people are thinking that.
So how can I be quicker? So when you start really interrogating that process,
you have to, it hurts a little bit, but it exposes a lot of opportunity.
You've talked about some of the greatest progress you've made toward that goal is training and
mentorship one on one training and mentorship with your teams. A lot of people talk about training,
but in your store, what is the X's and O's of your training strategy? Who does it? What do you
train on and how often do you do it? Yeah, so I was very fortunate when I came into my store,
I had a store that was not doing particularly well tons of potential, but just just not doing
particularly well. And I had a lot of youth, whether that be just by age, but also a lot by
frankly, I had my all my managers have been with me for this last three years. So they were brand
new into a management role. So frankly, it was a lot of just the golden rule and putting the shoe
on the other foot and asking, Hey, what do you wish when you started as an advisor, when you
started as a salesperson, what do you wish someone would have told you that would have saved you
so much time? Because we've, we've all gone through that scenario of starting in sales,
starting as an advisor, really excited you start working with customers. And then you get into a
spot. I don't quite know what to do. And a lot of times you get your hand slapped for doing the
wrong thing, when the right thing hasn't been outlined for you. So that's, that's really what
my focus was. So with my managers, we have every single week, they do a one on one where we focus
number one on, Hey, what's going well, what's not going well for you, I want to connect with that
other person, because if they have other stuff going on outside, they're not going to zero in.
So I connect with them on the human level. We then look at the metrics. I mean, the X's and O's
in the black and white of how are you performing versus how should you be performing? And
you want to obviously praise the positive and then dig into the negative because
And how often are you doing this? How often are you doing these conversations?
Once a week. Once a week. So how do you stay consistent on that? Because it sounds great
to sit down and go through your performance and ask about about any training deficits you have.
But what I've found is an automotive when we get super busy, a lot of those basics peel away. How
do you hold yourself accountable to doing it even when business is blowing? Business is hot and you
got a ton of customers all over the place. You're under, you know, you've got your understaffed,
you're underutilized. Yeah, I found so I originally got that idea from traction
that that book in the reality is having a specific time every single week was important,
but that has evolved into, hey, we need to get together at least once per week. Yeah, it doesn't
have to be a specific time because if you have 9am, you know, 10pm, whatever, or 10pm, 10am,
whatever it may be, and you have a customer coming in, we're both going to drop that and we're
going to handle what's in front of us. So we have a minimum, we have to have 10, 15 minutes.
And earlier on in that week, if you say, hey, I'm going to need a little bit more,
can I hollow out this time? No worries. But we have a set time for exactly when that meeting is.
But we're flexible on that. I mean, this is the car business. It's not something that's
always particularly rigid. You have to be flexible with the business.
So, so let me challenge that. Should you be flexible? I mean, at some point,
you've got to be flexible. But here's what I found too at Ziggler here at my auto group.
There's a culture of we train first. And sometimes we've got to make sure staffing is right so that
we get the customers taken care of. But working on ourselves and training is actually one of the
most important things we do. Because there will always be something more urgent. There will always
be something that needs our attention more than training. And nobody likes to train. But if we
don't train, we're never going to get better. We're never going to get great, right? Thoughts on
that. What do you think of my pushback there? No, I think that's we have kind of a multi-layered
approach. But I will tell you, you said something really close to my dad, actually. So my dad was
in the car business from he started selling cars when he was 16 out of a gas station parking lot,
and ended up retiring and selling his dealership here recently to my brother,
I'm youngest to seven comes bottom of the totem pole there. But no, it's funny because my dad
always talked about he's like, don't let in life things that are urgent come before things that
are important. Those are the things you have to key in on. And one simple way we do that is we do
have a time that we get together all as a group as well to be able to train. But that one on one
time with that individual sales consultant service advisor, whatever it may be, we need to at least
have the availability. I mean, that's why we have that open door policy is ultimately we're
going to connect today, we'll dive in and we'll do other training corporately. But there needs to be
some one on one time as well. Yeah, I think that is absolutely crucially important. You get a lot
of comments in the field. Lauren Klein says story of our life as it relates to training eager says
one on one training session with everyone at the dealership will make a huge impact. Every person
learns differently and needs individual guidance and approach to learning things correctly.
And I think as a leader, sometimes we get fatigued going back to step one back to zero,
because we've in our mind, and this is not accurate, sometimes we think we've trained and we've
trained and we've trained and we trained. And we can get a little bit of fatigue having to go
through it again, but it's got to be shared. It's got to be set again. Your Mazda OEM. Mazda is a
sleeper of a brand. Tell us a little bit about what do most people in January of 2026 not know
about Mazda from a dealer perspective? Oh, man. I mean, I tell you what, I had had no exposure
to Mazda prior to working here. Other than I had a couple of service advisors at other dealerships
that had Mazdas, and it said, Oh, great cars. And it was a new news is good news kind of a thing.
When I came over to the brand, I came from another dealer group that was, I mean, you had Lexus,
Cadillac, Jag Land Rover, you had some some relatively high end high end OEMs in that luxury
space. And coming over and looking at Mazda, the number one thing that floored me was the value
for the money in the product. And I mean, they just do such a good job. And it's, it's really a
brand that surprised me in multiple ways. Because that's one of the focuses they have this fixed
absorption side for me. That is a focus overall for Mazda is they want to really take care and
nurture their service customers and value them. So as a result, what's your fixed absorption?
Last question, because we're way over the producers are killing me. No worries. No worries. So we're
just just shy of 100%. We're 95 currently, I think I'll see how it ends up washing out here. But
that was the goal. That was the goal for the year. So it's to basically cover it,
fixed absorption, cover all your expenses by fixed operations, and then everything sales
does is plus plus, right? Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, that's awesome. Michael Westrom,
General Manager Ramsey Mazda. Thanks for being on the show and sharing your perspectives with us
today. Thank you for having me. Thanks, Mike. By the way, I love his mic. Isn't that cool? And
I love that he I was about to go down the road. He's like, Yeah, what you just said reminded me
of something my dad said. We talked about feeling old. I felt old in that moment because I also
got into automotive basically when I was in high school. Not at a gas station, but in the
Suzu dealership. Nobody remembers the Suzu. I remember Suzu. I remember the Suzu rodeo and
the ego and stuff. Yeah, he said something super important, though. Let's do it. I think is is
often overlooked in all facets of life, right? We do it with kids. We tell kids and employees
what not to do, but it's so much more meaningful to teach and train on what to do. So when you get
into that positive reinforcement loop of, Hey, this is what we do in this scenario. This is what
we do in the scenario. Now the truth or what the positive results should be becomes evident,
like seamlessly rather than, Oh, no, I shouldn't do that. I shouldn't do that. Yeah,
just a more meaningful way to coach. You run them towards what you want, not away from what
you don't. I love that. Eager K says, That's my story. I started at 16 years old out of a gas
station with a mechanic shop selling used cars 5 to 10 on the lot and grew to be a franchise dealer
principle. And CalChasteno13 says, Pepperidge Farms remembers. Julie, this is our 100th episode.
Thank you all. We are here because of you. Everybody that gets into our comments, Eager K,
Lauren Klein, yoga cars, Ben, everybody that watches the show every single Monday, Wednesday,
Friday at 1pm. We are so grateful to you. And for the first 100, Julie, I like the idea of the
1000, 1000, 1000. And don't forget, if you're listening to this after the fact going to the
show notes, get the link for the co-video, video competition. It's going on right now.
You can learn more details by clicking the link in the show notes. And we'd love to see your
videos. We'll crown the four champions and then we'll find the number one CDG Cardiola ship guy,
video competition challenge winner coming up. But to all of our audience, thanks for watching
Daily Deal Live where we break down the biggest moves in the car business as they happen. Don't
forget, we're here live every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, 1pm Eastern. So if this is your world,
hit like, hit subscribe, turn on those notifications so you never ever miss a beat.
And we'll see you next episode, everybody. Thanks for being here 100. Thanks guys.
About this episode
Celebrating its 100th episode, Daily Dealer Live dives into the challenges and strategies of automotive dealerships in 2026. Guests Scott Farr, COO of P4 Automotive, and Stefan Farie, CEO of Car Wars, discuss team building, hiring challenges, and the importance of customer engagement through technology. They highlight the significance of video communication in sales and the role of AI in improving customer service. Micah Westrom from Ramsey Mazda shares insights on fixed absorption and the value of training and mentorship in enhancing dealership performance. This episode is packed with actionable insights for dealers navigating a competitive market.
Original notes
Today's show features:
- Scott Pharr, COO/Partner of P4 Automotive
- Stephane Ferri, CEO of Car Wars
- Micah Westrum, General Manager of Ramsey Mazda
This episode is brought to you by:
Stream Companies – Stream Companies is a full-service, fully integrated, tech-enabled advertising agency that drives measurable results through performance marketing, creative and content development, and proprietary AdTech solutions. Our innovative platforms, including the Retail Ready platform and Integrated Marketing Cloud, empower brands to optimize performance and accelerate growth. To learn more, visit StreamCompanies.com.
Dealer Video Excellence Challenge, presented by Covideo – enter the contest by submitting your videos for your chance to win $1,000 and 3 months of Covideo access here: https://2tqce38uozv.typeform.com/to/KEOuOixJ
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