Used values mean how much used cars are worth when people buy or sell them. These prices can go up or down depending on how many cars are available and how many people want to buy them.
Auto subprime delinquencies happen when people with not-so-good credit miss their car loan payments. When many people do this, it can be a sign that the car loan market is having problems.
The Mercedes-Benz SL is a fancy two-seat car made for fun driving and style. It's been around for a long time and is known for being fast and looking great. People talk about it because it shows how Mercedes makes special, high-quality cars.
Broker deals happen when someone helps sell cars between dealers and buyers, making it easier to find cars but sometimes costing dealers money. It’s like a middleman helping with the sale.
The Tata Aria is a type of car that mixes features of a big family car and a small truck, made by an Indian company. It's designed to be comfortable and useful for different kinds of driving. People talk about it because it was Tata's way of making a nicer, affordable SUV.
The Ford F-100 is an old-style pickup truck made by Ford many years ago. It was known for being strong and useful for work, and many people still like it today. Talking about it shows how important it is to Ford fans and workers.
F&I means Finance and Insurance. It's the part of a car dealership that helps you get a loan to buy a car and offers insurance or extra protection plans.
LIVE
Hey everybody, welcome back to another episode of the Daily Dealer Live.
I'm your host, Sam Dark, and thanks for choosing to be here on this Wednesday, the 23rd of February.
And here's something to consider midweek.
Used values have swung double digits in the past months.
Auto subprime delinquencies, well, they're at multi-year highs.
And national service retention, well, it's quietly slipping.
All-Wall floor plan costs are elevated.
In this marketplace, we're clearly seeing signs that average execution is getting exposed.
I see that every day in my role as COO.
Today, joining the show, Matt Sokolowski, also COO, joins to discuss how he's building
leadership bench strength in a large auto group, while pressures are real.
Michael Gilson also joins with an opinion on unlocking millions in revenue,
hiding in your database and your CRM and among your customer records.
And we also, last up today, have the youngest F&I Ford F&I manager in the nation.
It's self-proclaimed, we'll test that, Ryan Merrick.
He joins to discuss why modern F&I process beats old school tactics every time.
Today, we've got leadership.
We've got intelligence.
We've got execution.
And that's our show.
But first, let's hit today's auto industry headlines.
All right, first up today, in the service department, more customers are
demanding real-time answers and AI advisors are quickly becoming a legitimate
solution to meet those demands, this according to a new report by InMotion
Brands. Per the report, roughly between 20 and 40 percent of inbound calls to
service shops, they go unanswered.
That is an astounding statistic to me.
20 to 40 percent of inbound calls to service go unanswered.
And roughly 80 percent of callers who hit voicemail, well, they hang up
before they actually leave a message and they take that business elsewhere
often. But for dealerships, AI offers a new lever.
It acts as a 24-7 intake advisor that can field common call types while escalating
only qualified opportunities to human staff that frees up overburdened
service advisors, BDC managers and other staff to take care of the customers
with the bigger issues.
And dealers are using these hybrid models, dealers using these hybrid
models are showing measurable gains, close rates climbing from 20 to 28
percent, this according to the study.
And average repair orders rising from $1,029.50, I want to know where the
50 cents came from, to $1,095 tapping on $1,100.
Still, AI will not fix a broken process and results improve most when
the AI handoff process is clearly defined.
Pricing language is standardized and advisors receive follow-up coaching.
Interesting statistic and report to report out to you this morning.
We'll follow that and more AI related news throughout the week and coming
episodes. Next up today, more technology news this morning.
FullPath's latest auto intelligence index highlights how AI platforms are
now influencing vehicle discovery in ways traditional search can no longer do.
Total traffic to dealership websites from generative AI sources such as
ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Clauda and Grock surged more than 15 times year over
year. ChatGPT remains the dominant force accounting for roughly 89 percent of
all AI originated traffic.
But Google Gemini is gaining ground quickly, notching a 50 percent month
over month surge and growing its share from 4 percent to 6.5 percent
between December and January. Beyond AI referrals, the broader digital
picture shows growth access growth across the board.
Website traffic jumped notably for Stellanus, Hyundai and Honda.
Meanwhile, Toyota dealers grew marketing budgets by 24 percent month over month
and 27 percent year over year. Mercedes-Benz saw the sharpest monthly increase.
That's up 58 percent and JLR more than doubled its spend from a year ago.
What's the signal? Well, dealers that treat AI as a new top funnel channel
keep merchandising clean and flex marketing to match day supply will be
better positioned to capture demand without giving away margin.
And even as I read that news piece, parts of that conflict with a
car dealership guy pod we released earlier this week with president
CEO of Wikimotive. Go there, listen to that.
There are several opinions about where to put your generative
AI dollar spend and ad spend in this rapidly evolving AI marketplace.
In other news today, dealers and industry advocates are telling CDG news
that car brokers and the legal gray area they operate in are hurting
the industry in multiple ways. Want more on that as an aside?
Check out Monday's show where we had a robust discussion on brokering
and how it's impacting dealers, particularly in New Jersey.
Back to the story, they argue that a lack of regulations for brokering
practices along with manufacturers that don't police their own policies
have helped fuel an increase in brokering in recent years to the
detriment of franchise dealers. For example, in New Jersey strict
regulations against brokering took effect in June 2024,
but they've not been enforced. And for dealers, the core complaint
is the math operator Paul Sansone Jr. says some stores will take
three to $7,000 losses. He said it on Monday's daily dealer
live show on broker deals just to hit volume targets and
unlock back-end incentives, pumping the numbers, but gutting
long-term profitability. Yet, supporters argue that brokering
provides convenience, upfront pricing, and access to hard-to-find
inventory. And when former broker put it to CDG news, quote,
maybe dealers should ask themselves why brokers are needed
in the first place. You want more context on this
conversation? Go back to Monday's show. Listen in.
We'd love your feedback as we continue to stream across all
CDG social media platforms. Post your comments. We'll bring
them into today's show. Next up, last up in today's news, dealership
M&A activity is continuing its red hot pace with more deals
happening in North Carolina and Kansas. Hunter Automotive
Group purchased Victory Chevrolet from Brandon
Gandy in a deal that closed February 17th. This, according
to Performance Brokerage Services, which facilitated
the transaction, Hunter Auto now owns three dealerships
selling Hyundai, Subaru, and Volvo. They're all on the same
campus in Hendersonville, North Carolina. Further west in the
nation's bread basket, spouses Jennifer and Jason Duckdority
of Legacy Auto Center, they purchased the former Hyundai of
Dodge City in Kansas from the G1 Group in a deal that closed on
February 12th. The Hyundai store is the pair's
second dealership, according to Performance Brokerage
Services, Jamie Farley. And you can see these deal
announcements and many more throughout the entire year by
visiting the CDG Bicell Tracker at cdgbicell.com
powered by the Percidio Group and we love that Jingo.
And that, folks, is a wrap on today's industry headlines.
And hey, just a reminder, you can post your comments across
all CDG social media platform. Again, as I said before, we'll
bring it into today's show. Including, we'd love to get
your take on this broker discussion that we've been
having. It started Monday. It's continued through the week. I
see CDG circles are alight with the conversation on that, as
well as the conversation we had about Stellantis limiting
acquisitions by dealers and many take their take, is it
related to Carvon? Is it not? What's the play there on
Stellantis? There are many topics right now alight in
CDG circles. If you want more, you can join that up.
Yoga Cars, thanks for commenting in the post today. 15x
growth on AI Search, but still low overall volume. And that's
an opinion shared by WikiMotive in a pod we did earlier this
week. There are things he said you can do to prepare for
what will inevitably become more generative AI Search.
But for today, he would argue SEO, investing in SEO, in fact
investing in human-made SEO, is the place to go today.
Alight, let's launch into today's show. We've got an action pack
show, starting with the CEO of a large group in the Midwest.
Welcome to the show. CEO Willis Auto Campus, Matt Sokolowski.
Matt, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks. Appreciate you guys
having me on. It's awesome. Pump to have you here. Thanks for
joining the Daily Deal Live. You're a first-time guest, so
we're excited to get your take on things that you're
doing in the marketplace to win. Before we dive into our
first question, Matt, just tell us a little bit about
yourself, your role in the auto group you work with for.
Yeah, easy. Been in the car business 23 years. That's an easy
one because it's a year my first daughter, my daughter was
born and made my wife nervous. She's okay with it now.
Willis Automotive, we've got eight brands that we have on
the sales side. Great brands, Lexus, Cadillac,
Infinity, Land Rover, Mini, and Chevrolet and Nissan.
Proud to represent those in the Central Iowa area.
Operate with our core values. That's first and foremost
and love our people. Yeah, that's awesome. So
it's interesting, Matt. You run multiple rooftops. You're in a tough market
and there's downturn signals right now in the U.S. automotive space. There's
plateauing. You've told me your focus right now is
professional training and leadership. Frame that for us. Why are you
choosing professional training and leadership over sales
strategy today in February 2026? Yeah, thanks for the question.
It's, you know, as the car business goes, ups and downs happen
and when potential headwinds hit your way, what's our first reaction?
We lean on our people and we lean on them to do
even more than they have ever done before.
And so, you know, doubling down on the importance of having an amazing
culture and people that are truly trained up in their current roles
and ready to assume new roles should turn over happen, should
promotions happen. It's just more important than ever
when things do get a little tighter. What's the toughest role you're finding
to hire for or to develop for in automotive February 2026?
When you're looking at things, two things come to mind immediately.
Technicians are always a challenge. Yeah.
Getting better, I would say. And then your entry-level
BDC type folks and retaining those folks sometimes can be a challenge.
We feel like we've, we're definitely in a really good space there, but those two
roles are tough and then everybody always wants great salespeople.
So BDC is interesting. We hear a lot about AI and some
technology taking over some of the BDC task.
Have you implemented any AI in the BDC role?
And if so, where, and where are you finding the best BDC candidates today in
February 2026? Yeah, of course. Thanks.
Yes, to answer your question, we have, we tried one AI company that I won't
mention that didn't really work out for us.
And then more currently with an AI company, I don't know if you want me
to mention them or not, but yeah, yeah, yeah.
Numa and Angie Augustine with Numa brought that to us.
It's been an amazing onboarding experience. We've had them for a year now.
And whenever we're looking at a service, you know, is it going to provide
better guest care? And that, that means our internal guests too. Is it good for
our teammates and is it good for our paying guests that are
coming in and out the door? And I'll just tell you Numa is a
homerun yes on that. Numa gets every single, you were talking about
unanswered calls. There's no unanswered calls anymore.
And the calls go directly to the people that they need to go to.
Flipping, you know, you talk about frustrations with guests and it's,
I left a message and I didn't get a call back in the same day and that's
over and over and over again. The beautiful thing about Numa,
among one of many things, is you have the ability to track that.
And we've gone from that same, we were in that boat a day to get a voicemail
returned to now with all of our brands, our average response time to a voicemail
is 10 minutes. And Numa does an amazing job of
converting guests when they're talking to them,
talking to them to text. People would rather text and so that's one of
their first things. Would you rather communicate via text?
Heck yes, I would. What percentage of people are converting from voice to
text in your experience? 70 plus percent are converting immediately
on that first, you know, offer to text. And I would say, you know,
and how does this work for our company? Well, our director of guest care who
oversees sales, service, BDC and everything,
she's the one that brought Numa to us before NADA
a year ago and said, Matt, you got to check this one out. If you go one
place, check this one out. And we did. And I mean, I don't want to,
I'll give you a little dirty little secret. We were
of our brands, we were underwater on all but two on national CSI, meaning we were
below average. And now we're up to
seven of nine on our brands on the service side,
finished the year over national average with CSI.
And would you attribute it to that technology or better trained people or
what would you attribute the increase in the CSI to?
All of it, because what Numa has done is it's given our teammates the ability to
inhale and exhale. Those BDC reps were not the right people to be
fielding the phone calls on. I'm frustrated because my car's not
ready. I'm frustrated because I haven't had an update. I'm frustrated
this, that or the other thing. Or I just have a question.
Those calls anymore, so their job satisfaction has gone through the roof.
They're able to focus on outbound calls now, CSI calls now. How do we do
yesterday when you were in? And those are more fun calls to handle.
And that's what fascinates me about some of this technology. Some people are
reticent to adopt it. They push back on it because they fear it'll
take a job away. But to your point, the high volume of
frustration that comes in through a lot of service departments, you can't
staff for it. Certainly at 2 a.m. in the morning. And some of this tech will
answer that and respond to it more quickly earlier. And then it allows our
staff to be a little bit more at ease and not feel like they're constantly
getting bombarded. And they can focus on the stuff that's
really challenging. For those that are curious, so
I think a lot in automotive, myself included, COO role, we both share
that. You've seen things that have worked and
you've seen things that haven't. That first solution you mentioned,
what about it didn't work? And what would be your takeaway lesson to
other dealers watching today when you're considering purchasing similar tech
to avoid the lesson that you learned early on?
Number one, I would encourage you to involve your team, whatever you're
looking to adopt. Get a group of whoever's in
charge of that and then a frontline person to weigh in on and sit in the
demo with you. If you've sat through a
demo, sit through it again for the courtesy of
them and let them really weigh in and buy in and then listen to them after it
on boards. What didn't work about that one is it
didn't do what they said it was going to do and it was really truly upsetting
our guests. What was the specific claim that
they made that it didn't deliver on? They specifically said that their
AI tool had the ability to talk seamlessly with a guest
and you couldn't tell it was AI. You could tell it was AI
and it wasn't listening to our guests when they would say hey I just want to
talk to somebody and it wouldn't get them to the right person
but when that happens it does happen. There's a lot of
good sales people out there. My encouragement, I heard this at
NADA, is when you had on board one of these new
solutions, the very next day I heard it at the
at the Hague Partners conference. They did it. That was a great conference by the way.
I was only born and invited me and it's awesome but
best practice dealer on board is a new system.
He sends them a cancellation the very next day and they're like whoa
whoa whoa. It's like hey man I'm you know whether
I'm 30 days. Keep you on notice. Yeah we're
on notice. We need to make sure this thing works and then and then pivot.
If it doesn't work, pivot. Yeah you know I love that. I was just talking to one of
RGMs in our group today and he and I actually
posted something to LinkedIn that you know we had a vendor partner who had
sent us an email over the holiday saying hey I hope you all have success while
I'm at the beach and we were both just like that's so tone deaf right and he
had another experience with a partner. I asked him to see if a problem was
fixed and he's like Sam the guy's like trying to half
half-assed handle it while he's on vacation and he says you know I'm on
vacation I'll get to you back to you when I'm when I'm back and
to your point we've I think 2026 is about getting vendors and partners to
raise the level of play and execution and I like that strategy of
delivering a cancellation as soon as you sign up because
you know there should be these 12 month contracts don't
don't serve anyone. I want the team serving us
and I want us to be equally you know tied to making this thing successful fair
fair yeah yeah absolutely so so you don't you don't want to say the name of the
first AI company probably it was years ago so they probably developed beyond it
right I'm gonna I'm gonna get you know actually they have not developed
beyond all they have who is it I went and took another
demo just a new diligence at any VA and I was just like
asking them all these I'm like really okay okay thanks for your time I'll take
a water and I went on my way so this is only your perspective but who is it out
of curiosity I'm not telling you okay all right at
least I asked because I will get shredded in the comments I'm already seen a ton
of comments if I don't ask you people who lose their minds
Lauren Klein I appreciate that but I'm not on here to
you know make waves Lauren Klein says finally some
quantifiable ROI coming from AI and there are
AI is truly the tale of two cities all right NADA you were there
you're thinking about developing your people your bench strength you're thinking
about implementing tools that deliver ROI to the organization was there a tool
that you walked away from after NADA and you said hey this is valuable and
you're committed to implementing into your organization
I did not find anything new in that regard I did find some
things that intrigued me and I've we have some demos set up
there's a company called M.A.E make auto enjoyable and
it's like a MAGA play huh yeah my team and I are going to take a demo on that
later today actually and it looks like a really robust sales tool
that looks really interesting but I always like stopping by the N.C.M
booth we've had tremendous success with
the G.M.E.P. program I've been through that we've sent several other
leaders through that and you know it's one of our biggest success
stories we've we've promoted man over half the people that
have taken that have been promoted so it's it's pretty good but
so yoga car cars comes into the comments says for SAS product month to
month is enough in that case cancellation makes no sense so
yoga long time listener and you quote you post up often
I would say I think you're right but most SAS products try to get you on a
six to twelve month contract and I just don't think there's a need for a long
term contract when we're trying to hold each other accountable
I don't know Matt what thoughts you have about that do you sign long term
contracts in your group for SAS products
because of what they say are the setup costs and the development costs to
implement into your organization we always try to take the shortest contract
possible and and it's just it's a good idea to
do that and if it works out you can always
you can always take a longer one later but that's always our goal is
to take a little bit shorter and you know whether it's six months we don't
intend to to cancel in six months we don't intend to
cancel any year if we sign up for something we're here
to be great partners on both ends for a long long time you know we talked
about Numa I I imagine them as a partner in our
business for years to come yeah and by the way they're not
a sponsor on today's show but thank you for bringing this up I mean it's
interesting to hear everybody's stories with different providers
and this world is evolving so quickly all right let's go back to talent
development let's go back to bench strength love it when I saw those points
in the show the prep for today I messaged hand on I'm like come on
like I you know everybody talks culture everybody talks development
it's a buzzword and in most cases it means absolutely nothing so let's
pressure test this when you say development what specifically
are you doing to develop your team do you have like a depth chart
and a succession map by role how often do you update this what are you doing
in February of 2026 to truly train develop and career path your teams
um I mean it there's there's two ends of it that you've got the top in with
executive levels you need you need people to replace
me if I get hit by a bus yeah but all throughout the organization and it
really it starts off with interns I mean we've
four years ago we committed to interns on both the sales and service
side we've retained on the service side more than 50 percent of our interns and
on the sales side 30 percent and you get that buy-in early on with
young people they bring an energy to the culture
and an excitement and a new perspective that that can translate on and on
but every leader in our I think we've got 50 people in leadership roles in our
organization they know that when the term
hit by a bus shows up on the their one-on-one agenda
it means we're going to talk about where they at with with succession planning
and what's going to happen once you get promoted because that's
you know people sometimes they're happy in their current role
and we have we have professional development programs for people that
are discerning leadership and for people that are happy in their
current role because you should always be developing
so who comes into your role when you get if you get hit by the bus
I'm not going to name their names because you know I don't need
I don't need head you don't need you don't need to uh you don't need to actually
have a bus contracted to hit you that would be the other problem right yeah
for sure but I mean I can tell you this there are three people that
that are in this organization right now that could absolutely
step into my role and and do it just as well and you know
maybe even better don't tell them that but I guess everybody's watching now
but but that's what happens when roles turn over
you know peace that's the expectation they're going to take it to the next
level and I'm sure whoever takes my gig will okay so there are
successors named and you're developing you're working with them to be
prepared if that moment comes let's go before we have to
bounce let's go to the sales and service roles I'm fascinated
by that you say you have interns for sales let's go into that world
where do you find these interns what's the training program look like
and what's the transition from intern into a full fledged sales position
look like in your organization yeah I love that question because I love our
interns we started with interns four years ago on the first year
we weren't that good at it I mean we just weren't we had never had interns
before we we wrote a loose curriculum and we
kind of you know they got to spend a day with
me each and that that was good but it wasn't
enough per se they didn't have enough on the leadership
side so we've we've developed that curriculum over the years to a much
better situation but we also retained a few of those
first-year interns and now they've helped us to continue to develop the program
but I mean they in what's a sales intern do they come
in and they have they're assigned to a sales
manager and they have they have regular scheduled
touch points with myself they they have the opportunity to get exposed to
leadership development and philosophies with our
leaders but they also have to do the grunt work
they have to understand what it takes to build relationships which is the most
important thing with our with people that work
here and then with our guests they're not allowed to talk to a guest until
they're ready but by the end of the summer
you know they're out there taking ups and selling cars and they just get
they I mean we all got it at one point the bug to be in the car business
and and it happens so I love the question from online
our aria asks aria jasmine game I butcher some of these names sorry to
everybody where are you getting these interns they coming from high school
are they college how are you sourcing these that yeah they're from college we go
to um so we're in central Iowa we go to um we've
gotten interns from the University of Iowa last year we had University of
Iowa we had Iowa State Grandview College here at
Grandview University here in Des Moines has been a great resource we've
retained two of them we have a an intern that interned with us
last year who is expressed interested he wants to work full time
he's getting his master's degree at Notre Dame right now
finishing in May and then hooking back up with us then
so really all over but we go we go to the college career fairs
specifically recruiting in sales and leadership interns
so Matt if your Notre Dame guy doesn't decide to come back to Iowa tell
him he's got a place in the chicagoland we're super close between Kalamazoo we
want him at Ziggler Matt so we may uh we may try to make this deal I think that's
a great strategy in February 2026 to deepen your
bent strength before we wrap let's just hit a couple news worthy items
so uh you've got a bunch of different brands you've got Chevy
Infinity Lexus Nissan Volvo JLR Mini what OEM in February 2026 is
winning for you and who's struggling right now I would tell
you the winning right now is is Lexus we hear it over and again but they are
they're an amazing partner you take just um a week and a half ago we had
eight Lexus executives visit us here on site in in Little Des Moines, Iowa the
best city in the country and and just reviewing our our how we did last year
and and what what are our goals for this year what is our budget what do
they see for us and how do we partner
yeah I how do we is it they're nationally they're projected to go backwards
about one percent but we're not okay with that and they're not okay with that
with us okay so how do we get together and push our business forward while
everyone else may be having a bit of a regression
and um it's not just about sales they they set benchmarks for us on the
service side and we just love being challenged
you could take which OEM in your portfolio could take a lesson from
Lexus and improve operations overall
I think you know many could take a lesson from uh Lexus to a degree you know
infinity and Nissan are they're they're pointing in the right direction and I
know they get a lot of bad press they're they have a good
a good plan in progress and if they can execute on that
um they'll be in good shape but they could take they could take a few cues
from Lexus perhaps yeah Tiago Tiago was recently on the show had
some great things to talk about the future but they're still under fire
and they're a brand that's gaining momentum on the
up upside so it's interesting you talked about JLR you recently
converted from selling and servicing to service only what went into the
decision of giving back the sales side and and why
even retain service through that um well the sales side
you know they we were unsure of the direction that they were going it
didn't look like a really solid plan that aligned with our
market it may align in other markets and then and
you know by talking about are you talking about Jag's ad campaign or what are
you referring to talking a lot about uh they have a lot of
things going on and a lot of you know ad campaigns always come into a part of it
but uh yeah yeah I mean it just you know they're
the the focus and vision maybe didn't align with central Iowa as much as it
could in a lot of other areas and I'm sure they'll have
great success there but we we kept service and they get
for five years uh because we sold a lot of Jaguars we sold a lot of new ones
and we sold a lot of CPO ones and it's our duty to our guests
to provide that guest care at least for the entire
warranty that we sold them and sold them the new vehicle or the CPO
vehicle and we have an obligation to fulfill that
well Matt Sokolowski COO of Willis Auto Campus we'd love to have you
back at the very end of the show we've got the nation's youngest
Ford FNI manager love to get your take on development and
some topics that you both work together on so Matt we appreciate you being on the
show we'll catch you at the very end sounds great thanks for the time
appreciate it thank you all right today's episode let's talk
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comments in the show and get linked up with Impel
props to Devin Daly CEO of Impel he recently came to Ziggler Auto Group
for our GM AI best practice session it was a heck of a lot of fun to sit there
with Aaron to sit there with all of our GM teams and talk about
AI and how it's evolving in our business as I mentioned on the last show
the the shocking takeaway for me from that entire session
was how well sales people are doing in our world today
with chat GPT co-pilot and some of these other AI tools
and just leaning into their personal brand it's exciting to see
sales people in February 2026 owning it in a way that they haven't
in the past because those tools haven't been available and these tools
more often are free right now a couple comments from online Lauren crying
2520 dealer partners don't need contracts
vendors do and aria says if you sign a long-term contract it makes the vendor
lazy and I think that is absolutely an interesting comment as
well all right let's transition to our next guest
up CEO of Conversica Michael Gilson Michael welcome to the show today
thanks for having me I'm excited to be here appreciate having you on before we
dive into our questions tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do
absolutely so I'm CEO of Conversica I've been in the software industry for
the last 15 years really building industry specific AI
products so I've seen a couple waves of AI
and I think this is a very exciting time for the automotive industry
specifically but when I took over the leadership of
Conversica back in April of last year I made auto a core focus of our company
and we've invested a lot in kind of developing this next wave of
applications that I'm very excited to talk about today so we just talked to
Matt about leadership and training and their their kind of career
pathing employees that's a hidden resource for those
dealers that truly do that they can realize gains economically get more
customers you have a different answer you probably agree with Matt but
you're saying hey that next million dollars in gross that could come from your
database and there are millions tied up
hidden in a database if I gave you a Toyota store today doing 150 bucks a
month where would you look first inside that
stores database to find real incremental value in February 2026
absolutely so it's a great question and just to feed off Matt come back to
just the people element of this in a minute
but really the starting point for really any modern
AI system is really the data in the data foundation
and when I look at automotive there's a couple key areas that we typically
look at and and adjust as part of our system but also
every AI system should be doing this so for context I we always think about
a DMS system that's kind of the backbone of most major dealership
operations either at the dealership level or the group level
that's really the core system of record that has so much information
buried in it very hard to get information out of that but that's really
kind of your core system of record then oftentimes there may have a
CDP system in conjunction with your CRM system
as well as all of your historical conversational engagement data
this is the data that's buried in emails
can be buried in call logs text messages what have you
so being able to ingest across all of those data sources
and being able to reason across it to really create
a strong data foundation which will enable you
to generate strategic insights about your specific
dealership or group and I think that's really the key
area of just how this process begins and I think once you do that
you now have a strategy at your disposal that you can go and execute
and I think the AI system should really help you formulate
a best in class strategy for how to drive performance at that specific
dealership or how to drive performance in a specific market
that's really what the modern system should be able to do so I would say
that's where typically we see oftentimes by mining that information
and analyzing it oftentimes just one dealership
oftentimes will have millions of dollars of untapped revenue that they
can go and target obviously with the help of a human team behind you
but we can identify those revenue opportunities in real time to go and
execute all that that's very in this case how does the AI work
so you're saying it gets signals from the CRM it gets it from email
it gets it does it get it from phone conversations and other things like is
it using what are the different sources it's using to come up with this
yes so the beauty of a modern architecture is that you can ingest
data in any form that could be structure databases like CRMs or DMS systems
that could be unstructured data that could be window stickers that could be
emails that could be call logs if you have them being able to ingest
all of that regardless of the form in which it comes in
is really in some ways a prerequisite to be able to execute on what I've
just described so wholesale swings we know in
the marketplace use cars are challenging dealers who
mispriced trades can your AI calculate equities positions dynamically and
identify customers sitting in positive equity before the market shifts is it
able to go in and make calculations like that
absolutely the beauty of it really this intelligence layer
think of your best analyst or the world's best analysts
looking at your your DMS trends looking at your CRM data
and being able to create models that can identify
situations that have positive equity so if someone is bringing in their car
for service someone on your team should have access to that
information and understand you know what there's a high likelihood
that the specific car owner has equity in their car based on the trends that
we've seen historically that we pulled from
your dealerships data or your groups data to help you identify that
information that's something that we absolutely can help with
yeah so you say there's money sitting in the average dealer database
we're defining database more broadly it's not just CRM it's not just DMS
it's in all the data that you collect how much money would you say is sitting in
a dealer average dealer database that that is unmind that if you got
aggressive with it in February 2026 you could realize
throughout the end of 2026 yeah based on the dealerships that we've worked with
in the groups it's oftentimes it's several million
dollars at any point in time so there's
there's oftentimes a lot of untapped revenue
and what are the first three steps to realizing that what
how long does it take to begin the process how long does it take to get up and
running and then what does the training look like with a team
to get the team to effectively mind this and act
act on it absolutely so that's a great question
so i think the core i would say time required to do this is actually
integrating into these core systems of record we've done this now for
for several years so we understand all the integration requirements so
that obviously is not a huge lip in today's day in the world in
terms of being able to activate these applications
but this new application layer really in some ways can generate these insights
in minutes once the data is on boarded into these systems right so
you know being able to develop a world-class strategy
in less than three minutes is now possible and we we've proven that
really with the customers that we've worked with
so solving a huge critical challenge right up front is a great way to start any
type of engagement it's a great path forward
so you mentioned the word cdp data lakes that those are terms we've talked a lot
about on the show cdp is this idea of cleansing the
data as i understand it and having one reservoir if you're multiple stores
having it all together you can segregate it out you can bring it
together what percent of dealership marketing today
in february 2026 would you say is wasted on
incorrect data or low-value segments or miss
targeting information merely because you're not using the right data
yeah i will say a large portion of it to be honest
i think a lot of what you see or what i see now
there's a lot of robotic interactions there's a lot of campaigns that are
being run that don't truly understand the customer
not having you know been specific insights as an example not understanding
your purchase history what your preferences might be
all that kind of complex information that's buried in your course of systems
of record whether that's a crem system a structured data repository like a cdp
or a traditional dms system there's a wealth of information in that data
that's not being relayed or included as part of these marketing campaigns so
oftentimes dealerships or groups are forced not by their own
willingness but it's more this is the best they can do based on the data
access that they have they're forced to have these
somewhat robotic interactions that are you know if you're trying to penetrate a
market you don't really have that that vehicle level
inside of a customer specific insight baked into these
marketing campaigns and and that's a huge loss based on the capabilities that
modern technology can provide so patrick block venture motive
venture says integrating with dms is the biggest sass hurdle
coming into automotive uh how do you look at integrating with
different dms's have you had a hard have you had a challenge
yeah so i would say i understand that challenge
in a very specific way you know i think that he's absolutely right i think the
integrations are really key and and i think they are very challenging
especially with very archaic systems like a dms system of which there are
several uh the even bigger challenges if you
have a group oftentimes different group tops will have different dms
systems so trying to reason across that or connect the dots across an
entire group is very difficult to do and and i would say
there's a lot of innovations that also has happened at the integration
layer so historically the reason it's been very challenging
is because you've had to do one-to-one data mappings
with very complex fields and oftentimes dms systems will have
custom fields that either dealerships create or just
tech debt that evolves of of course of several years as you build more and
more capabilities into your core dms system
that creates a lot of complexity when you're trying to get data out
and oftentimes some of these the taxonomies of these systems are very
hard to interpret very hard to read and as a result a lot of that data gets
wasted and you can't really leverage it in a way that can really make you
more money really running a specific marketing campaign
or getting a clearer picture of a specific customer
it's very hard to do that integration the right way
fast forward to today what these ai systems can do now
is really help you reason across all that complex information and really help you
figure out what data to pull even if you can't fundamentally understand
what it is the system can actually make sense of it in a way a human cannot
and connect dots across different dms systems different markets different
vehicles makes and models what have you that's really what this new
integration capability can deliver for you
so you heard matt's frustration just a few minutes ago he talked about a voice
ai technology that he found and he credits it with increased csi like
a ton of productivity it's awesome right um
it's interesting because there are also ai tools that make claims that they
never deliver on from your perspective as a ceo of a large company
very competitive in the automotive space what would you say to the dealer
listening today that said listen it's a ai's a gold rush
i hear it everywhere i'm sick and tired all the promises i can't keep up with it
all i'm just not going to implement any of it what
you know what do you say to change his mind or her mind to bring her back to
the table but then also what to watch out for with companies and
avoid as far as promises made that they can't simply deliver on
absolutely i love that question because really i've been in the ai business now
for 15 years and i can say especially in automotive
there's a lot of snake oil out there there is a lot of false promises there's a
lot of projects that never get off the ground and that's just
unfortunately that's a byproduct of the industry and
that's really something that vendors need to get better at
not delivering false promises and what i would say to someone that
is skeptical i would really start with you shouldn't
need three six nine months to get value out of a system
and i think the system should be designed and architected in such a way
where once you have your data foundation you should have insights
in delivering value in minutes not weeks not months
you know core tangible insights that your team can leverage
to go and execute in a specific market you know automotive is a fairly complex
industry it's highly fragmented almost every
dealership exists in perfect competition um you know trying to
you know beat a rival dealership or try to gain market share in a specific
specific market requires a strategic
layer of insights to help guide your execution
and so i think that's where if i was skeptical if i was one of your
listeners and i might be skeptical of doing these projects
i feel like if you can nail that piece first then i think the secondary
sorry go ahead and what and the first piece is the integration of the
data sets right i think it's it's really
getting your data all in one place but having a system that can actually reason
across that it is much different right so this is
this is fundamentally different than what a data warehouse might have been
historically or you know trying to build a cdp on
top of some of this data this is a fundamentally new paradigm
that is now a reality for for this but you can see why so many
dealers are so kind of crusted at this point frustrated
candidly with it because you know it is it's a new way of thinking in automotive
and it's new capacity but it's also a new set of undelivered promises so we
appreciate your perspective on how to overcome that
and you know start thinking about with full access to data how do you better
monetize that paul solzman comes into the con
con comments that says many vendors began as a car guy who met a tech guy
but don't know how to architect a business out of their idea
this leads to false promises and poor execution as we wrap up here
uh michael any thoughts on that absolutely i think you know software
in in technology it's its own industry right it's its own universe of
complexity it's you know think about how complex the auto businesses the
technology and software layer is just as complex
and it requires domain expertise and it requires people
who've been there and done that and been through these complex situations in
the past it can navigate these huge technological trends because
right now we're in the middle of a major paradigm shift and i don't think
people fully grasp yet so having that domain expertise that could really in
some ways harness this new tech but speak the language of automotive
i think it's is a hard thing to find so that i think that's why you either
have people that gravitate from the autoside they try to go to tech or
vice versa it's just a difficult landscape with which to
build these next generation applications michael gielson co of
confersica thank you so much for being on the show today sharing your
perspectives on all things a i and listening and
aggregating all this data to better develop your i spend and just as a
note to our audience we showed on your name plate we had a mistake on there we
showed cdg circles you're not in the circles simply
because you're on the vendor side we haven't perfected that side yet so
the circles are safe uh and a lot of dealers uh
are watching for those uh to have conversations about things that are
going on we will make an announcement in the near
future about cdg circles that are available for
vendor partners within automotive so we appreciate you and your perspectives
and sporting today's show so thanks for being on michael thanks for having me
all right uh so you know interesting conversation i love
you know when we talk about contracts i don't want to put him on the spot
but if you sign a long-term contract is one of the comments it makes the
vendor lazy i actually think that that's true i think one of the ways
best ways to hold a vendor particularly a software vendor accountable
in 2026 is to make sure that there isn't a
long-term contract because think about this if the product works if it's as
good as michael gillson uh is is talking about with
conversica it's going to deliver on the tool or
numa as matt said and you're not going to need and you're not going to
want to make a change but if i'm stuck in a 12-month contract or a 24-month
contract i'm sure michael doesn't do that matt's company that he brought in it
doesn't then i just don't think everybody's
equally incentivized and if you have a a counter perspective to that i'd love
to hear it uh in in the uh chat so uh patrick block block ventures
says long-term contracts can make a vendor lazy but also entice them to
develop more specific to your needs when you have custom needs that's
fair heidi mcmillan says great perspective
all right last up today we're going to transition to ryan merrick
who is by the way the youngest ford f and i manager in the entire country ryan
welcome to the show thanks for having me on i appreciate it
thanks for being here ryan tell us a little bit about yourself and a little
bit about what you do before we dive into
absolutely so i've been in the car business since
little before i graduated high school i started off as a lot guy
actually at a mercedes store and very slowly kind of
worked my way up um loved it fell in love with it from the second
that i started i had two great sales managers that kind of took me under
their wing a little bit and showed me the ropes of the whole thing and
since then i've lived breathed and slept car business
yeah so at nineteen and one of the youngest if not the
youngest finance managers in the country what are some of the biggest
obstacles you have in creating trust with the consumer to make these tough
decisions with you but then also finance is a leadership
position in a dealership without a title you can't hire fire anybody but you've
got to develop and and have credibility with the sales
teams you serve how do you uh at your age
how do you overcome age to uh create that credibility with the teams and the
customer so to be completely honest with you i think
with the customer it's actually something that makes it a little bit easier
for me um and the reason for that is because when you
walk into a finance office and most customers i would argue know what they're
getting into they bought cars before they know exactly when they walk in my
office that it's going to be a warranty pitch in the whole nine yards
yeah and so my whole goal in combating that um
at a young age is really to change up the process and rather than
trying to go through a pitch and using more of like sales tactics
i take more of like a consultative approach with the customer
um build a connection with them i'm huge on doing
um like a really good introduction to myself and then learning a little bit
about the customer i listen exactly to the customer and what's
they're telling me is going to make them buy warranty and then from there
i go through it so rather than just kind of hammering them and doing the
usual in the f and i box i take a little different of an
approach to that so you said actually in your
notes you talk about emotional consultative what the heck does emotional
consultative mean in real language not theory
so rather than somebody coming to my office i and i go through your standard
warranty pitch and it's the same for every customer a lot of the old school
f and i guys they've been doing this for 40 years and
that's just what they know every single time the first thing that i do
before i even start signing paperwork anything i walk out to this customer
the salesperson's desk and i do a quick little interview with the customer and
rather than talking about the car or anything like that i ask him obviously
like what led you to pick this one kind of i learned about the customer and i
developed like a relationship with him and that does two things for me first
of all and right off the bat it builds a lot of
trust coming into my office and second of all i've noticed
it keeps people coming back because i get text messages all day long as a
finance guy which usually doesn't happen for customers asking me
questions about certain things and they trust the dealer a little bit more and
that way when they come back into my office i can take a consultative
approach to selling them a warranty and i can be like hey based off of your
situation this is exactly what i would recommend to you and this is why
it's going to help you out in the long term of your ownership
yeah so uh from from your experience standpoint
what is what is the biggest challenge that you see in f and i today
for a young finance producer in february of 2026
the biggest challenge for me specifically that i run into
is that honestly it doesn't necessarily have to do anything with selling
warranty or paperwork anything like that it's more so being able to
for myself for myself into a leader for the sales team and
everybody else here at my store at a young age and granted
it's it's very weird to do that because i don't necessarily have more experience
than a lot of these people that are on my sales team in a dealership just
because i'm so young but i've been able to gain a rapport
with them and share some of the stuff that i see and rather than
rather than taking like a um a very heavy leadership approach
more so same kind of thing that i do with my customer be consultative and
come to a good decision on how we can both progress
each other out and we do that we do a great job of that throughout my entire
store so from the desk to the finance office to the sales people
that's one thing that i think makes my store so successful is that we all
all right so so ryan ryan ryan we're having a little bit of a challenge on
the connection so what what i'm going to do for just a second is i'm going to
give you a second to see if that connection improves i'm going to have
the producers pop you out for just a second let's see if that connection
improves and i'd like to actually bring matt back
co of willis auto campus because this is a relevant interesting conversation as
it relates to f and i um and i actually want to pick up with matt while the
producers are working with you ryan just to see what we can do on the audio
side uh i want to bring matt back in uh our social
media comments are a light with comments on this whole
contract term uh patrick block again came in said long-term contracts can
make a vendor lazy but also entice them to develop more
specific more specifics to your needs when you have custom
needs um uh and then dan c says the longer the
contract the stronger the sla needs to be along with plenty of
dialogue along the way to ensure everyone is meeting
the agreed upon terms inspect what you expect
um thoughts on contract term and when you think about
you know in your role as coo you're working with vendors all the
time setting expectations how do you balance the need of a
vendor to have a contract with your need to get production and
performance how do you balance those two um i mean
no matter what you're doing it's about a relationship that you're building
and it's it's really critical to before you sign any contract no
matter what the length of it is you know what is the long term
and a lot of them will they'll say the all of the right things but
what's your true feeling on these people and what's the relationship look like
and do we do we feel that they're sincere and giving
good guest care yeah um one thing that we we do and i'm
sure a lot of dealerships do you know i'd like to see a bunch of people you're
doing business with and i'm gonna we call them we have to vet them and
i don't want people that you just onboarded six months ago i want to
know people that have been doing business with you that you had
you know you say you want a an 18 month contract a two-year contract who's been
with you for for 21 months of the 24 months i want to see
how that month is going because they can lay out all these
expectations and we're going to have great communication we'll have we'll have
weekly touch points and monthly meetings and we'll be in your dealership
yeah the first shot though that first tool you put in
to do service calls didn't meet the didn't meet up to expectations it
didn't deliver on the promises made was that a failure in kind of the
vetting process in advance was that a lesson learned by you
well i mean it was definitely a lesson learned by us
and uh we felt like we had all the right things in motion we talked to
i would say in that situation not enough references
and we were excited about it we we were looking to
improve a specific area of the business and
we were grasping at tools rather than grasping at training and
developing our people because no matter what tool you on board there's bolt-ons
left and right all over this industry if you don't have the right people in
place the best bolt-on in the world is going to
that is true yes that is absolutely part of the failure of that company and
with us in the partnership on us we weren't we weren't ready for it
and but they weren't ready for us either yeah all right so ryan merrick
finance manager fred beans automotive group we're going to have a challenge
getting him back due to some tech difficulties but i just want to bring
up heidi mcmullin said this kid needs to be nominated for ally 40 under 40
he's well spoken he understands the culture he understands the customer
just as we wrap up here uh matt thoughts on a good finance manager you
know he's 19 years old super young is 19 too young to be a
successful finance manager in automotive and
what do you look for when hiring finance managers would you hire a kid like
ryan to represent your organization in that key crucial uh role
yeah because i feel like he sincerely cares about the guest
and age doesn't matter in any position in our role
i mean there's people that are in their 20s that maybe could take my my job
for example because when we're hiring and on boarding
it's more about their ability to be a good teammate
provide great guest care and their emotional intelligence
and we'll teach them the rest and if as long as they have the
the emotional qualities and the ability and that
they truly care about providing the best options for the guest
everything else will fall into place or they'll you'll find a different
place on the bus so it's interesting though and
and i didn't get his response we'll definitely have him back on the show
i said hey part of your role is leading the customer but it's also
leading the rest of the sales team finance is a key role
it doesn't have higher fire capabilities you've got to be a leader on the floor is
is leadership at that level and a function of age and experience or can
it be taught early to the right person with the right set of values as you
seek to develop then strength that your group will oh it can be taught early
and i can think of you know a specific
two specific finance managers at our Nissan store that are
the epitome of what you want in a finance manager for your sales team
and that's a good partner that's someone that's not
safety belted to their seat in their office watching youtube videos and shopping
on amazon it's someone that's out engaging with the
sales team and providing training providing
that that turn when the desk manager is working two or three at the same time
and going and interacting with the guests people that
finance managers that truly do that are the ones that are tapped to be
sales managers and general sales managers yes because they'll all come to the
interview and say that's the best thing that you should do but when you can
sit back and actually observe these people in their environment executing
with excellence you know you've got the right people
yeah if they're willing to take on that additional challenge because i also
think one of the toughest jobs to hire for today is a gsm and a gm because
there are so many features and things that are responsible for
matt succolowski co willis auto group thanks for coming back to the end of
the show sharing your perspectives with us thanks for being here
yeah it's my pleasure thanks sam appreciate you
hey we'll bring uh we will absolutely bring ryan back on a lot of great
comments online patrick block says he's going places for sure ageism is
another hurdle for him to clear but i think that the fred beans group is
leading the way of showing development for the next generation
by the way i was at an ad at a lunch or at a dinner with
fred beans with their cfo and then the grandson fred beans grandson and i
agree a hundred percent would love to have them on the show at some point in the
future great conversation with them about
all things automotive in the future of so hey to you our listening audience
thank you so much for watching today thanks for joining this daily dealer
live episode today don't forget this friday one pm eastern
if it's friday it's fixed ops friday so to everybody thanks for watching
today where he break down the biggest moves in the car businesses they
happen don't forget we are here every
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you
About this episode
Leadership and technology take center stage as Matt Sokolowski shares how his multi-brand group is strengthening leadership bench strength amid market pressures. Michael Gilson reveals untapped profit potential hidden in dealership databases and CRMs. Ryan Merrick, a young Ford F&I manager, discusses why modern F&I processes outperform traditional tactics. The episode also covers AI’s growing role in service departments and digital marketing, highlighting how AI tools like Numa improve customer response times and sales conversion. Industry trends such as dealership M&A activity and the controversial impact of car brokers are also explored.
Today's show features:
- Matt Sokolowski, COO of Willis Auto Campus
- Michael Gilson, CEO of Conversica
- Ryan Merrick, Finance Manager at Fred Beans Automotive Group
This episode is brought to you by:
Impel – Your sales team should be selling—not answering the same questions after hours or chasing low-intent leads. Impel AI works 24/7, instantly answering complex inventory, trade-in, and financing inquiries while booking appointments automatically. And with Agentic Response capability, Impel AI interprets the context of each lead source in real time and delivers tailored journeys that drive 26% more sales conversions. Your reps can finally focus on engaging with ready-to-buy shoppers at exactly the right moment and closing deals more efficiently. See how we turn your BDC into a sales powerhouse. Learn more at https://carguymedia.com/3MZnxmf.
Conversica – The Conversica Intelligence platform helps dealerships unlock hidden revenue by analyzing their complete database to identify high-value opportunities and convert them automatically. Purpose-built AI that understands dealership economics—profit margins, service intervals, equity positions—to find the customers worth working right now. Learn more at https://www.conversica.com/industries/automotive
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