Starkey on After-Sale CX, DAS Tech CEO on Driving Sales, Ruder on Client Growth | Daily Dealer Live

it's on the chopping block. It's

live. I'm your host, Sam Dark. And thanks for joining us today in this gathering place for

automotive to learn, to share, to have a voice. And today I'm here live with digital air strike

from their ultimate dealer 20 session. And what a better place to share best practices and automotive

best practice gold than in, well, Mexico and in sunshine. That's where we are here today broadcasting

live. More on that in a moment. But first, let's dive into today's automotive headlines.

First up today, hot off the Bicell CD, the CDG Bicell tracker crossroads automotive group has

expanded its national footprint. We love it. We've got our own jingle with the acquisition

of McLaughlin Ford in Sumter, South Carolina. This marks its first store in the state and bringing

its total to 15 Ford dealerships nationwide. The purchase ends nearly 50 years of McLaughlin family

ownership at the Sumter location. Crossroads plans to construct a new state of the art facility to

enhance sales service and customer amenities while continuing operations at the existing site during

the transition. What's the big picture here? Well, with over 2400 new Fords available across its

network, Crossroads now operates one of the largest Ford dealer in the country, leveraging its scale

for greater inventory, flexibility, purchasing power and manufacture incentives. That single

location dealerships will have a tough time matching. Next up today, credit is flowing a bit

easier in September after a brief slowdown in August. This according to dealer track whose

credit index edged up to 98.1 showing lenders are starting to open up again. Approval rates held

steady at 74.4% but more subprime buyers are getting approved now accounting for 14.2% of loans

and loan terms stretching beyond 72 months are becoming more common. Banks led the easing up

about 1.6% while captive lenders pulled back slightly. What's the bottom line here? Well,

with credit loosening especially in used and certified pre-owned deals,

dealers are seeing more opportunities but high rates in longer terms mean every deal still needs

to be structured carefully. And finally up today, trade friction is intensifying on multiple fronts

with both China and Canada taking steps that could reshape supply chains and pricing across the

auto industry. In Beijing, officials are holding firm on new rare earth export controls despite

US tariff threats. The rules cover not only raw materials but also any product containing even

a trace of rare earth materials from electric motors to semiconductors giving China a significant

leverage over global auto and EV production. The Chinese Ministry of Commerce criticized

Washington's tariff stance as willful emphasizing that China doesn't seek a trade war but is not

afraid of it. Meanwhile, Canada is moving to reduce dependence on the US developing a new

industrial strategy to expand exports to Europe and prioritize domestic procurement. Industry

minister Melanie Jolie says the plan aims to fight for every single job in the auto sector

as Ottawa negotiates with Trump administration over new trade terms. By broadening its markets,

Canada gains more leverage in talks covering auto steel, aluminum and energy though it risks

fracturing the tightly integrated North American supply chain that's long kept cost stable.

Zooming out from China's tightening control over its critical materials to Canada charting a more

independent trade path, it's safe to say the ground is shifting under the auto industry.

And that is a wrap on today's news coming to you again live from Mexico. For those joining our

live stream, we are live across all CDG social media platforms. Post your comments to those

platforms, your questions, your comments, your feedback will help to shape today's show and

what better topic today in Mexico than automotive best practices. We've got quite a show coming up

for you today. For example, we'll talk what metric is quickly replacing SEO? What's okay to

upload to AI? We've talked about this a lot. What should you stay away from? What are some of those

different AI platforms? Do you have an employee code of conduct? Most of us do, but do you have a

employee social media policy? Some do. What about an AI policy? We'll talk about that and more

on today's episode coming up again live from Digital Airstrike's ultimate automotive 20 group

meeting here in Mexico. Your favorite bald guy posted a good morning from Tracy Honda in California.

Favorite bald guy. Congrats and welcome to the show. We're happy to have you on. We are going to dive

straight into our first guest again, Sonny Mexico. We turned to Tony Starkey, customer experience

manager at Bob Pointer, family of dealerships. Tony, welcome to the show. Hey, good morning and

glad to be here. I'm glad there's not a backdrop. It's live, so I can attest to it because it's

just upstairs. I'm downstairs for the internet for all the things you're upstairs. You've got a

breathtaking view overlooking the Pacific Ocean there and what a forum, what a format, what a place.

But let's start with the question we always ask if it's okay. Tony, by the way, Tony, when I think

of Tony Starkey, I think of Iron Man. Do you get that quite a bit, Tony? All the time. Okay, no

relationship though. No, not that I'm aware of. No, not that you're aware of. All right, very good.

Well, tell us this, how's biz and as part of that, tell us a little bit about who you are and what

you do in the dealership. So yeah, this actually for us, fortunately, we're things are really well

that have been for a while. Can't complain with that. We continue to look for more as any dealership

does, but I mean, all in all, we're doing very well both in our sales and service department.

I have a 26 year background in radio. I've been in the automotive space for 14 years.

We have three rooftops. We do the Chevrolet Buick GMC, CDJR, and then we also have the Ford store,

but my main focus is customer experience. And so we have a group of three in our dealership group

that focused nothing on customer experience and to make sure that we are providing a great

experience after the sale. You know, Sam, so many times dealers spend so much time, effort,

focus, and money on getting leads and working those leads and getting the sale. And once the

sale is done, then the follow up ends and that's where it really should start. And again, that's

what we take over. You know, and it's interesting, we talk a lot on here about some of the big

national players, right? Carvan and their attempt to, you know, they're coming after some of these

franchise dealerships buying up a couple Chrysler points, one in the Phoenix area and then another

they're looking to acquire in the Texas area. One way dealers prevent against the spread of

larger groups is you defend that customer experience. So Bob, you've got, or Tony, you've

got a ton of experience with creating customer experience for a dealer looking to replicate

what you're doing and sell more cars and retain more customers as a result of customer experience.

What's one thing that a dealer could replicate today in October of 2025 to create a similar

experience to what you're doing? Yeah, great question. I think that's very valid to bring

that up. And again, I can't stress enough how important that is. And we have a two year follow

process in our leadership. And I can't believe there's one single most important part of that

process. Again, we have a secret separate different key points that we send out from the time that

the vehicle is purchased or even closed RO again up until a two year mark. But we have a number

of different programs and products that we send out. And again, I'm a big believer of little

things make big differences. And we send anything out from, you know, send every buyer a Yeti mug

with our logo on there. I have to bring a prop with me. I get the Yeti mug. It's a $23 is what

it costs me to send that. When I do my follow up, I get a tremendous amount of people that respond

and appreciate that. Again, it's an impression. Our logo is on there using every single day.

That's just the very first key point that we have. We also send out car wash. We have a car wash that's

in from Louisville to in anapolis. And we send out free car washes from our service manager.

That's been a real hit for us. We also send out gift cards at a six month mark. So we do a number

of things, Sam, that generate, you know, a good customer experience. And it goes far beyond that.

But I mean, you have to, if you're in a dealership that you're not spending time and you're not

spending focus on your customer experience, follow up after the sale, you're really missing the boat.

So it's interesting, Tony. Some listening to the show might go, wait, Tony Starkey, experienced

manager in automotive. And your title is customer experience manager. You work at Bob Pointer.

Who do you report to in the dealership? And how did your job come about a vet in automotive

focused on nothing but that experience? Why did Bob Pointer family dealerships decide to

make that investment? Yeah, so again, mentioned earlier, you know, I have a 26 year experience

in radio. And, you know, the account was my account as a radio rep. And 14 years ago,

they decided that, you know, they needed a marketing person. So they approached me and

we come to an agreement, I accept the position. They said, here you go, here's your desk. Good

luck and have fun. So that was pretty much it's ever. So from then on, you know, I built the

marketing team. And I will say that my marketing is digital airstrike. And I know that I'm here

for that. But I'm telling you, your dealers watching, that's the we actually treat digital

airstrike as an employee. Because again, they do vast majority of our marketing. And they do a

very good job with that. But what I do is again, we realize the importance of customer experience.

So I went to the owner and said, Hey, you know, we need to really come up with some sort of process

about customer experience. And he said, What are you thinking you do do it? And we built a great

team and our process is phenomenal. And our repeat businesses is second to none. It's five times

more expensive to get a new customer than it is to retain the one you have. So it's extremely

important to have some sort of process when you're following up both sales and service.

Okay, so you're super intentional about that follow up process. What does that process look

like from day zero to day seven after day one, we actually once once the RO is closed, I actually

reach out to the customer or we our team reach out to the service customer just to make sure

their experience is positive. We do the same thing on the sales side, we'd like to do that

immediately in case there is an issue that we can catch them before they get the OEM survey.

So we send out our own little survey with a four question survey survey. What are the questions?

What was your experience with your finance, your salesperson? Where did you generate your

interest from? What website did you use? And were you completely satisfied with your experience?

If the answers know that we're asking them to reach out and they do and that provides gives me

the opportunity to reach out to them prior to an OEM survey and to take care of any

issue that they may have. And if you don't ask someone oftentimes, they won't even tell you.

And unfortunately, in our society is something bad happens, you're going to tell 10 people,

something good happens, you're going to tell one. So yeah, that's our first step is as soon as the

the vehicle is sold, the RO is closed, we're reaching out. And you said we so you and your team,

it's not necessarily the salesperson or the service team. Why, why have a separate team to

do that touch? Why not rely on the salespeople or the service folks to do that? It's a great

question. But I mean, it's time consuming. I mean, it's more than what a salesperson can do with

our follow up process. And oftentimes, you know, most sustainable, you know, they may make a phone

call or they may shoot an email, but it takes more than that. So we felt like our leadership

that's extremely important to have a team put together to do that job. And that's what we've

done. So I mean, it's more it takes time to do it right. And we do that. And I know our salespeople

salespeople may reach out to say thank you, but we go far beyond that. And it's been very successful

for us. And I've had the program going on about 11 years now. So it's interesting,

in some dealerships, not yours, not mine, certainly, but out there somewhere,

there are general managers and sales managers that are a little bit concerned about too fast

follow up, right? Because you're going to create remorse, buyer's remorse, maybe they come in,

they want to cancel off an iProducts. How do you deal with that? You know, if you get somebody

that's frustrated, upset in the first 24 hours, 4872, what's your process for making sure that

that customer is satisfied and they have an excellent experience? And that happens. I mean,

you know, I think regardless, you're gonna have you're gonna have that happen. I think they appreciate

the fact that you're reaching out. And they give you validity around the bat as opposed to no one

reached out. And, you know, you just basically ask them what were their concerns? What's their

situation? Why didn't like the product, whatever it may be, but a lot of times you can talk through

that as opposed to, you know, just a customer. There are times that a customer may want to, you

know, do away with a tire and wheel or a warranty, but it's a rare occasion, but you talk to a customer,

get down their level, explain to them the value of that again, outside of the FBI office.

They're fine with it.

How many folks do you have on your team and how many monthly sales are you handling as follow-up?

Because this is automated in a digital world, right? There are a lot of groups that are saying,

hey, I'm going to hand this all off to AI. You haven't done that. Why not? And what does your

team look like? How many units do you handle as far? We have, there's me and three others on my team.

We're in a very rural town. We're about an hour from Minneapolis, an hour from Louisville,

Kentucky, about an hour and a half west of Cincinnati. And we feel like that personal touch,

although AI is great. They'll get me wrong. And animation is great, but you don't get that personal

touch when you actually have a real person calling you and talking to you. It means a lot. And we

get so much response from customers saying thank you for your follow-up. I really appreciate that.

And we talk about, again, the automated AI. It's great, but I still think you need that personal

touch. Yeah, it's interesting and automotive how some of the things that are so simple end up being

manual intentional reaching out as opposed to doing it. So how many are on your team and how

many units do you sell a month there combined? Well, we have on my customer experience team,

we have three of us. We have, again, the three roof tops. We sell in combination of the three

stores. We'll move about 360 units a month and we'll close about 2,200 ROs. Yeah. Okay. And you

handle the sales and the ROs. Have you ever done like a cost analysis of, hey, you've got the expense

of your department, people making these calls? How do you look at the ROI on the time and the

investment you spend in reaching out and contacting those customers in terms of retention or CSI or

anything else? Yeah, it's a great question. One other program that we do, and I'll lead to that

to your answer is we send out, I have another prop, I send out a, it's a $10 gift card, which

seems to be very small, but it's noted that an OEM coupon is actually our gift card. So we send

those out. We send those out the six month mark. So what happens is we'll send you a letter. It's

basically saying thank you for your business and maybe time for service. Here's a $10 gift card

to use towards the service. I checked before I left. I think that we have, we've had 261 gift

cards redeemed and we've generated about $146,000 in ROs from those gift cards. And people will

hang on to the gift cards. That's about a good service or accessories and parts. But again,

it's something small, but little things make big differences. And just that itself will again,

will generate $144,000 in RO revenue. So you and your team do that. You don't leave that to sales

people to do as part of a, so do sales, do they still do an introduction to service as part of

their process with the customer at time of delivery, or do you handle that exclusively?

They do that. Again, since I'm huge on customer experience, I think they kind of fail at that

area. If you're open or not, I think that's important. They do that, but we don't do a great

job of that. Yeah. Well, and here's what I love about what you're doing is, is you're taking a

process that could be in sales, it could be in service, but is tough to nail consistently

an automotive, but every customer deserves, right? And you're ensuring you've got some redundancy

through your department. And you said $146,000 in ROs generated, right? Or it's customer service.

That's, that's, that's significant. Yeah. I mean, again, it's really, you know, we have our,

when we do other things, I'm a week, you know, it's not just customer experience, but that's

my main job. And my team does some other things, but I mean, it's definitely

worth the annual salary for those employees for what we do. But yeah, that just touches on one

thing that we do. I mean, we send out, again, we send out a lot of letters from the service

department, but we see the residual coming back and just the feedback we get from our clients

and our customers on their appreciation for what we're doing that many other dealers are not doing.

And again, I can't stress enough how important follow up after selling services to your dealership.

So it's interesting. I think a lot of dealers listening to you today, they're thinking about,

hey, you know, during COVID, there was a little bit less UIO units and operation.

Some of the OEM sold less new cars. So retention is everything, right? So what are you doing after,

let's say 12, 24 months to make sure that those customers come back in? We saw the coupon. That's

great. Is there anything else you're doing longer term to ensure retention? Yeah, we probably should

have made myself an implement. I mean, we're after a two year mark that we're actually,

that's kind of the last touchpoint that I have. We have some automated stuff to go out after that.

But again, I'm not a big proponent of automated emails. Those do go out. But again, we stop at

the 24 month mark as far as what I handle. And again, the automation may continue on after that.

So Tony, do you get into the, and by the way, Igor K says good salesmen show their customer

service department, set the customer with the service advisor for all future services,

also introduced the customer with parts and sales manager on a TO. By the way, I agree 100% with

that. Great salespeople do that. But Tony, part of the power in what you're doing is, is you're a

check and a balance against that. And it probably helps encourage salespeople to be more thorough.

So it's not a surprise yoga car says some of those service customers would come back for service.

Anyway, total RO revenue is not 100% due to gift cards plays a role, but it is difficult to measure.

I agree with that. Well, how would you respond to that, Tony? When you go spike the ball,

I asked you to do it. So you gave me the number. What, what, what would you say to, hey, you can't

count every dollar as plus plus because some of those customers would have been, been back anyway.

You know, I mean, again, that's a great question. But I mean, I still think that, that,

you know, the, if anything like what you're at fast food, you're with an automotive,

but it's about your customer experience. So we know if we providing a great customer experience,

both pre-sale and post-sale, that we've done everything we can possibly do to gain that,

the trust of that customer. So, you know, I mean, again, we see the return customer,

three generation customers again, we're in a very rural town, but, you know,

we've sold last, last year we sold cars in 36 different states.

So it's not just, you know, our little farming community where we sell cars at where

we compete with all the Metro leaders all over the very rural area. But I think a lot of it is

the way we do our processing the front end and our follow-up on the back end. And I just don't

think there's a better process out there for many either. I could be wrong, but that's what I feel

about it. So, Tony, final question. Mentorship is super important in the world. It's interesting.

May 27th, 2026 is an important date to you. What on earth happens in May, on May 27th, 2026,

which is, you know, it's six months or so from now, seven, eight months.

It's coming soon. I actually did, it'll be a year from that.

527, 27, I'm actually going to retire from full-time position. I like what I do, but,

you know, I'm the age now where, you know, you never know what life brings the next day. So,

I've got options, you know, I'm a real safe broker and I do auctioneering and I still

may continue to stay on. You know, again, as I mentioned earlier, Dizzler Strike is basically

an employee of us because they have a vast enjoy of our marketing. So, I still may be able to hang on

and with the customer experience part of it, still working Dizzler Strike. So, I'll retire

from a full-time position, but I'm going to go part-time and I'm super excited.

That's awesome. Tony Starkey, customer experience manager at Bob Pointer.

Family of dealerships, thanks for being on the show and sharing your perspectives. We appreciate

you being here today. Thanks for having me. Go enjoy the warm weather out there.

You know, it is interesting and automotive how, again, some of the most key crucial things we do

are kind of manual touch point direct to the consumer and there's significant value in that.

And I like, you know, I'm seeing a lot of the comments online from our audience reminding, hey,

you know, salespeople should be doing this, service departments should be doing this.

And I agree 100% and I also think there is huge value to having a check and a balance behind it.

When you send the message to sales and service that, hey, this is so important, we're willing to

have a separate department, they're going to make calls in addition. As a sales consultant,

I want to make sure I'm going to check myself to make sure I follow that process so that when

that call comes, the customer is well aware. And look, it's all about connecting and creating an

ultimate experience for every single customer going a little bit above and beyond that separates,

you know, your dealership, wherever you are across the United States from,

you know, some of the largest dealer groups out there that may not have resources or ability

to deliver that personally. So, all right, let's go to our next guest. Actually, you know what,

let's talk Repair360 first. We love Repair360 reconditioning software. The dealership's secret

weapon, the platform that connects the dots to help you sell more cars, go to Repair360.com to

learn more. You can also scan the QR code there. We appreciate Repair360 for supporting the show

today. You can go to the link also in the show notes if you're listening to the re-record of

today's episode on all the podcast platforms or if you're watching it on YouTube, you can scan the

QR code, you're watching it live, you can scan as well. Igor Kay, thanks for saying good salesman

can get one to two deals from service if that salesman has a good relationship with the advisor.

Making friends with the advisor is critical to sales department and sales people.

Agreed 100% with that. So, all right, let's turn to back here to Mexico. Alexi Venere,

co-founder, CEO, Das Technology. Alexi, welcome to the show.

Hi, Sam, how are you? It's been so long since I've seen you.

It's been at least 30 minutes and thank you for hosting here in this beautiful place. You've got

quite the setting behind you. And actually, before I ask the question of how's biz,

why does a company like Das bring dealers into a spot like this? Like, it's a beautiful place,

it's a beautiful forum, you know, there's a ton to do. What's the thought process with that?

Sure. Well, I've been in the automotive industry a very, very long time and I was very fortunate to

work at some great companies. He was calling dealer truck. I worked with Larry Vantel, the Vantel

Group. And, you know, I saw the value of 20 groups, right? We do have, for the most part,

a remote account management model. And I just always wanted to get to know our clients, our

dealers. And often when, even if you do visit them in the stores, as you guys all know, you're

so busy, you know, you're distracted. And I really personally, as well as our team really

wanted time with our clients or dealers to learn about their challenges, find new ways we could

help them build new technology. So it's sort of an advisory board with a product focus group,

but ultimately, and we do call it the ultimate 20 group, it's a chance for our dealers that

attend to network with each other, they're in non competitive markets, and really spend some

dedicated time just sharing best practices. So it is amazing, we do try to find the most amazing,

incredible resorts, because we know how valuable their time is. And it's worked out, this is our

eighth one we've done over the past, it's about five years. Yeah. And you could only invite a

certain number of dealers to an event like this. So we're going to talk at the end of our time

together about a way that those that may want the experience or at least get some of the insights,

they can go to a website, they can actually watch some of the best practices that are shared,

because to your point, I've seen it and I've seen it throughout my career, when

you've got four or five different dealers standing side by side, things happen, right,

conversations happen where they're like, Hey, that's a great idea, I'm going to implement it,

I'm going to go do that. And as long as they've got that commitment to execution, they can actually

turn that idea into dollars, vis-a-vis the execution. So all right, how's biz, Alexi? And

then as part of that, tell us a little bit about who you are and your role at DOS Technology.

Sure, thank you. Business is great in a way that I know this has been kind of a hard year for

everybody. I'm having flashbacks, the Great Recession, which is when we started.

Don't say that. No, I'm kidding. You know, I know, but COVID, but I feel like we're getting through

it. Anytime there's economic uncertainty, whatever it is, consumers kind of pull back,

maybe they pulled on that car a little longer, maybe they think they don't need that repair.

So we've seen that, but I feel like it's getting better. Interest rates coming down,

let's hope they come down more, it certainly helps. So we work with thousands of dealers

nationwide and we are fortunate to peer from them. And then adjust strategies and leverage

our technology in different ways to help them know what the economy is doing. Still make money,

right? Are we, you know, we're hearing that, you know, consumers maybe want more pre-owned

or maybe they're servicing a few more times before they buy. So we're, you know, we're happy

to work with them and we all know you learn the most during tougher times than when things are

easy. So I'm excited and we've been in a good year and I do think our dealers are excited about

the future. All right. What's, what, you've built this DOS technology into one of the more

recognized names in automotive tech. What sparked the idea for its formation for you?

You're asking. I had worked at tech companies as I mentioned before and I was lucky to be approached.

So we're going to get that. There you go.

You know, really getting the data, having all brands, a lot of markets across the country,

it was interesting to just see what was happening. And again, this was, you know,

I was doing that well before I started DAS and it became digital airstrike. But at the time,

I saw what was going on with social media. And for the first time, you know, a consumer had a

problem with you or any business. It wasn't just, you know, between you and the store and a few

people they would tell, they would broadcast it online and it became a negative billboard. So

I wanted to build technology to help our dealers harness the value of that billboard and social

media. And so the recession hit and again, dealers didn't maybe want to spend a lot of money. So we

found ways to leverage technology to engage with consumers and not just run around and spend a lot

on media buys. So that's where it started. And I think really working for a large dealership group

and with those dealers gave me like a PhD and truly understanding how to be a partner to our

dealers and not just a vendor. So it started there and then we really wanted to build a platform

and a process for excellent, you know, customer experience that wasn't just you had to switch

a tool or change a technology. So we want to be Switzerland and Intel Insign. We'll work with

all the dealers on all the existing vendors and tools they have and just find ways to make them

work better and harder for not just the dealer, but really so those consumers have a better experience.

Yeah. In fact, you know, you've given so there's a couple of things that are going through my mind.

You gave some great insight. You kind of were early onto the social media scene and you leveraged

the opportunity early, low cost, high impact, right? You were able to and one of the things you

now are able to do, we ask everybody on the show today, we say, who's your best digital lead provider?

When you look at all the different providers, who provides the best converting leads? And you've

actually got some technology that enables a dealer to very quickly say, I know the answer to that

and I can I can say that and and therefore I better put my money into the places where it

spends. What is that technology and how does that work? Sure. Well, as a lifelong marketer myself,

you know, everybody is getting you great results. There'll be a report or a certain way they look

at the data. But at the end of the day, you really need to understand that for yourself. And it is

different for different markets and different dealers and different brands. What we've done,

which is interesting, is we actually integrate with all lead providers and the dealer serum and

the DMS. And we treat all leads, you know, we assume they're equal. But then we use data and AI

to target each consumer with very specific communication that is relevant for them. So,

Sam, you just you sell the 2022, you know, Land Rover and you're thinking about trading again or

should you just service it again? And your message is going to be very different than, let's say,

Jane, you know, another part of the city that she did just buy a car, but there's maybe a recall.

And you don't want to message her until parts are in stock. So whatever it is, and maybe she's

messaging. So whatever, you know, the consumer and the data that we can pull together, we will

send them very specific messages. So chances are, hopefully, if they're a legitimate prospect and

lead, they will respond. And by doing that, we actually see in real time, who's engaging with

the leads the dealers are getting. And we have a report that will tell the dealers, yes, this lead

source sent me 300 leads last month. But did you know only 12% did anything when we reached out?

So it takes away the subjectivity of the salesperson that maybe said, oh, that was a bogus lead,

or but did the salesperson really follow up, right? So they can still do that. We still want

those wonderful people in your stores following up. But we kind of are very objective in it.

And then that's a real time report our dealers can look at. And then we take it all the way through

to show, you know, closed our rows and sales. Now, there might be multiple leads that could

take some credit for that touch points. But it really levels the playing field. And we usually

say to our dealers, hey, we want to assume that you've picked great vendors to help you drive traffic,

let's nurture all the leads. And then maybe what I'm just how much you spend in each category.

And continually work harder partnering with all your other vendors to get you the best results.

So as a big company, do you have a perspective on who the most productive digital leads are

nationwide and automotive? Dare you say this? Dare you speak the name of the company?

Well, you know, Switzerland depends on. Yeah, yeah, we're Switzerland. We will tell the dealers.

I mean, we become this consultant and partner. And sometimes it might be the messages, right?

If you don't have a way to test different messages to target those leads, you might get

different results. But that's why, you know, what we do, I get excited. Because again,

as a lifelong marketer, it was always a little nerve wracking just to rely on your sales team

to follow up. Yes, let them follow up. But we're that insurance policy that continues to nurture.

And we do know when a sales person follows up and we do know when a consumer is even looking at

something, we sent them, and then we'll message that sales person. We want them part of the process

and want them to pick up the phone and call. But, you know, it's it really, I think,

frees up your sales team to do what they usually do best, which is that belly to belly person to

person on the phone, communication, test drives, you know, and we free them up. So they're not

so chained to the desk, right? And they also get really cool insights. We want them to know

that a consumer clicked on this message about about this particular vehicle.

Maybe they started as a new car lead and now they're pre-owned, right? Did they do some financing,

you know, payment calculations that salesperson might want to know that. So there's a lot of

really helpful information that I actually think we help all the lead providers, more of them close.

Because there might be a great lead in there that someone doesn't follow up on. And do you really

know when that happens as the GM or head of the BDC? So you provide dealers with that transparency

and that kind of peek behind the curtains of knowing exactly what's going on, where to invest

money better. You use a lot of technology, AI driven, some of it. You've been on social for a

long time. You're coming into this AI driven world. There's a message you delivered today that I

thought was super fascinating. Most dealers have a social meat or a have an employee code of conduct,

right? There's a policy that most dealers are missing. Tell us what are they missing and why

is it important to relook at this? Well, I've learned it's two policies. Back in the day,

one of the things we started with is just helping every one of our dealers, we didn't charge them,

we would help them with a social media policy. Because, you know, again, back in the day when

we started, there weren't even business pages. There were no social ads, but we would find

sort of rogue salespeople sometimes they're aggressive and they would steal the dealership's

name and create their own pages or try to take leads going right to their cell phone,

which weren't traceable. So we still have today a social media policy. If anybody wants it, let

us know. You can go to the ultimate 20 group. That's one of the best practices we're sharing.

No cost. We're not selling that, but that's where it started. And now today, what I'm finding is

dealers don't know about having an AI policy. So this is crazy. We've never heard this before on

the show. An AI policy. Yes, please. And this is not something we're selling. We do it for ourselves

at DAS Technology, Digital Air Strike. So what's happening now with AI? You probably have this.

You've got some creative people that are using AI, maybe in their personal life, chat to your team.

Sora, video generating. Yeah, they found some cool ways to help their job be easier using it.

You want to control that for compliance security, but also so you get the benefit of scale. So

be great to get your employees together. See who's using it. You got to monitor it. You probably

need a way that they can't just download. There's a lot of different apps and tools today that are

free trials. You don't want them just putting that on your work computers and on your network.

And the biggest tip I can say that has to be in the policy, we've built for our own company

and interface. It's called a single pane, where when we choose to use any sort of enterprise,

enterprise, the keyword, AI tools, we keep all of our dealer's data, your customer's data,

on our, on our cloud network. We're not just uploading it into whatever free,

you know, AI, tool or app, even chat, GBT, perplexity, you know, any of those, because suddenly

you've now allowed your data and your customer's data to be on a public network. And as you know,

you can't do that, right? So there's, there's some things in that policy that we have, we can

certainly help the dealers with. And it's also just education and training. So much of social

media when at first was, you know, getting going. So your advice to dealers is implement an AI policy.

And as part of that, you've got to clarify, you cannot upload NPPI, non-public personal information,

customer data, financial data, because there is a risk. Are there stories of that data,

how it could get out there or precautionary or, I mean, it's such a new frontier, Alexi.

There is. We're actually, a lot of the vendors we're working with, we're helping them,

where we've seen them create these policies. I don't know, and I don't want to broadcast this to

some class action policy, I turn my friends out there, but we've seen it in other, you know,

state specific rules. You got to really be careful. Plus, that is your data. I'm a huge fan

and always been a huge proponent of our dealer's data is their data, right? And, and they should

use it for their benefit. Same thing. You don't want an employee somehow using some tool and taking

all your leads and going to work for the dealer down the street. So there's a lot of things we,

we just education wise want to help, you know, the industry. The other thing we've done too is,

in our product, we've got some very cool ways we've now integrated AI to help with that one-to-one

messaging. But again, every dealer has to approve it, right? The OEMs, we work with all the OEMs,

we're very transparent. We've created some really cool things that we do, but we're very open about

it one-to-one with our OEMs or partners or dealers around exactly how it works and they can set

preferences. We just, we don't want AI gone wild. And we, but we want to use it. There's so many

amazing ways you can use it now to get a lot more engagement and sales, you know? Yeah. Yeah.

All right. So let's step back from AI and tech and whatnot. And look, are there metrics that,

so every general manager watching, every dealer watching thinks about, hey, how do I best spend

dollars on marketing? How do I spend, best spend dollars to get those leads? What are the most

important metrics that every GM or dealer or marketing director should be looking at monthly

to make smarter decisions about vendors and dollar ad spend? Well, I usually, when I talk to our

dealers, I first want to look at engagement on the leads. And it's also just data in your

database, right? Inbound leads, fresh prospects, great. But also, who do you have in your database?

Either CRM that maybe didn't close, you know, or in your DMS. And we like to do identity resolution

on that data first. We like to take it and like clean it up for dealers. I've got a story. One of

our awesome dealers talked to me about, you know, just by just doing that, they still send service

mailers that work for them. But he was able to save $16,000 a month, just in not sending out

duplicate mailings. Because however, these other vendors that were doing postcards or what not,

they were just grabbing all the data and sending it, right? They actually make more money

when you send more. And it wasn't worth it. By also cleaning up your data, again, whether or not

you work with an outside vendor, us or anyone else, you know, maybe more of the messaging you

need to send, and you should like target different groups based on that. And that way, every dollar

you're spending, you'll just go further, you'll get more results. But what we do in our tool is we

allow the dealers to put in the budget. And once we know we've got a way to engage with the humans,

whether they're existing customers, old leads, new leads, then we like to put that budget number

in there and look at that engagement. And then we just work with the dealers. And full transparency,

we do have an awareness side of our business where we can drive leads to. We have our data in

there too. We're not always maybe number one, maybe we're the third best source that converts

on the actual, you know, programs we're running maybe on social media or streaming.

So last up question here, you're talking a little bit about a CDP, right?

Cleansing data, putting it into a CDP short term, longer term of data lake. What percent of dealers,

if you had to venture a guest based on everybody you work with, what percentage of dealers have

done that CDP data cleansing? That's a good question. The clarifier with that to that is they

might be paying someone to have access to a CDP, but most of the ones out there, it requires someone

in the dealership doing something, going in, running the campaign, someone that's well versed to do

some of that cleansing of the data. A lot of dealers that have a CDP don't do that. So from day

one, we'll do it for the dealers. We have to go in and do it. We'll share with you strategies,

we'll work together in campaigns, but even if you don't ever log in, we want to do it for you

because we do have the experience and we do work with thousands of dealers. So I would say

conservatively, maybe about 20% of dealers might have a tool. If they're left to have to run it

themselves, it's not getting used. It's not going to use properly. You're your own little silo,

your island, you really need people that will help you with that. So we're not just tech,

we're a team. Our team is very passionate about helping the dealers get results.

But even as you do that, it's still the dealer's data in that CDP, right? They still own that,

they still have access to it. You're just helping to keep it updated, all that stuff.

Yeah, and they can go in anytime. We find they just don't. So we're like, that's good, we're

protecting what your baby will make sure we're working with that data to get you results.

Well, Alexi Venere, CEO, DOS Technology and co-founder. Thanks for sharing an incredible

experience here south of the border. Everybody will notice we've had a few laughs online about

Mexico Wi-Fi and that might be part of your strategy. It's like you get dealers a little bit

disconnected and then you can actually share things without a lot of cell phone interruptions.

I don't know if there's anything into that, but very cool experience and it's a beautiful place

behind you and a great setting. So thanks for hosting the experience and for sharing these

best practices and making these dealers available to us today, Alexi. Thank you.

All right, everybody. So we get a ton of requests to join the Daily Deal Alive. We're taking all

those requests into one place. So if you're a dealer, if you've got an idea, an opinion, a best

practice that you'd love to share with the world. And by the way, it's interesting because in places

like this, we'll get people's thinking, well, why on earth do you share your best best practices?

In automotive, we know best practices are about execution. It's not about knowing, it's about

doing. And you can share those best practices, see how they fare out in the world and see who makes

them even better by going to cdgguest.com. Fill out our intake form to be considered for a future

guest spot. Your being on this show makes this show better just as the dealers we're seeing here

this week at DOS Technologies Ultimate 20 Group here in Mexico do the exact same.

And then final note, Card dealership guys back with our second annual NADA party happening in

Las Vegas. It is on Thursday, February 5th. It's the hottest ticket at NADA with special guests and

automotive personalities to be considered for a formal invite. Just hit the link in the show notes

request to join and fill out a questionnaire. NADA is also a great gathering place for

automotive best practices. And I'm actually learning that it's DOS technology that has some

pretty cool parties should have asked Alexi what theirs is this year, but they always provide a ton

of value back to dealers. And also at the end of today's show in the show notes, you can go to that

20 Group best practice session link. It'll be in the show note from DOS Technologies. And you can

see the videos from some of those best practices here in Mexico. So up next today, let's turn to

General Manager Northcutt Chevrolet, Chris Rudder. Chris, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me.

A pleasure to be here. Yeah, how are you enjoying sunny Mexico? Actually, I guess it's been a little

rainy here lately, but we'll take what we can get. I will tell you I told people work. I said,

I'm going to go do a little bit of business and a lot of bit of pleasure. So so far so good.

And guess what? You've been outed because you're on your live streaming right now. So everybody

knows exactly where you are, exactly what you're doing. And we'll pay the price for you back.

That's right. They're going to know exactly what when you come back, you know, there'll be some

cool ideas that will be put to use. So first off, let's do this. How's biz and as part of the answer,

give us a little bit of background, Chris, on you and what you do. Yeah. So for sure, the

patented answer, we're never happy in the car business. We always always want more. So it's

good. You know, we've seen the trend in our dealership at least switched from more of a we're

a 60% new 40% used. Now it's 60% use 40% new. So again, our goal is to stay ahead of the trend

and just make sure we're ahead of that curve. And so far so good. So about me personally,

I would say I'm kind of unique to the car business 11 years in the car business before that,

middle school math teacher, high school athletic director, middle school principal. So

everybody's like, why'd you get in the car business? Well, I was going to sell cars until

something better came along and I'm still waiting to find that. And you haven't yet, right? So yeah.

No, no. And I have a one year plan like Tony, you had earlier, but I've got a nine year plan. So

like my owner all the time, nine more years. So everything I decide on is a nine year decision.

Yeah. Yeah. So tell us this, what channels are actually paying off for you right now for acquiring

first time customers? Yeah. And that's an important question because we live in rural

Oklahoma. So I don't have an unlimited pool of customers. So not only take care of the ones we

got, but hopefully get their friends and their family. So, and I think it's a combination.

Again, I think lead sources are great and we rely heavily on digital air strike for a lot of our

stuff. But I think it's the customer experience as well. We talk all the time about red carpet

experience. I tell my sales guys and my managers, if people wouldn't go to Starbucks,

if it was just about the price of coffee, they go for the experience. You don't have coffee at home,

but we go to Starbucks because it's a great experience. Do you want to go to the Chip Filet

drive-thru? You want to go through Taco Bell's drive-thru? You know, Taco Bell, you hope you

get your order right. Chip Filet, they say my pleasure. They get it right. It's a great experience.

So I think that's key to not only selling people cars once or serving their car once,

but continuing to do so. So let's talk about that before we go into a little bit of lead generation.

What's one thing that you're doing right now, October of 2025, to separate yourself from the

rest of the industry in the experience front? What's one thing others could, when we talk

about execution, is everything seek to replicate? Yeah, I think follow-up is a big key to that.

We spent a lot of time on as part of that customer experience follow-up. It drives me crazy. I was

telling the story earlier when the customer walks in and says, I bought a car three years ago, but

I forgot who I bought it from. So I'll just work with you. That salesperson should get fired on

the spot. At least call them on the birthday. At least call them and say, hey, I have birthday,

chicken and yawn, but a whole lot more than that. And the good guys do that. Our good salespeople,

you know, we've got a car wash, say, bring in any time, I'll wash your car for you. I don't

want to get their car wash, but they have a conversation while they're driving that customer

through the car wash and check and see how things are going, how's your family, how's

things going. Oh, you've got a sister who's looking for a car, but be happy to help her. Some of those

kind of things that, again, those one-to-one conversations, those personal interactions

have to happen for that to be a great customer experience. So Chris, why if it works and why

if it helps a salesperson sell more cars, why is it so tough to get consistency and

replicating that process over and over again? You say, go ahead. No, I mean, you know, it's

true. Customers will walk through the door. They're like, hey, I bought a car here a few years ago.

I have no idea who I worked with. I'm here for my next car. Why is it so tough to get that connection

part down? Well, I think we've got some very good sales guys that have it down pat. And again,

that's why they're selling 20 cars a month and have been with us for a long time. I think sometimes

the new sales guys just get into a habit of trying. They want to sell so many cars. They don't,

they don't do the simple things to sell cars down the road. You know, I want to sell a car today

and then sell another one. Take 15 more minutes to, again, make sure that delivery experience

is great. Take that customer out to service. Make sure they had a good time. And then the

one-day call, the seven-day call, the six-month call, know when they're coming in service.

We have great tools. I tell you when your customers are in service or coming to the store,

go out and say hello to them. That will benefit you selling cars down the road a whole lot better

than just standing outside hoping somebody pulls in the line. So what are some of the best technology

solutions that you're using to help reinforce that behavior? The system is the solution, right?

If you want to make something repetitive, you want to have that consistent connection and contact,

you've got to systemize it. Yeah, two tools to use from Digital Air Strike. One is our response

logic. So the second a person puts a lead in, no matter where that lead comes from,

they're getting a message from us. Thanks for choosing North Colorado Group. We look forward

to helping you. And then when the salesperson, I don't have a BDC department, we're small enough

not to have one. When the salesperson has time, they can then take that lead over and respond.

But they're getting, we know they have to get responded to in the first five minutes to be

successful and to try and capture that lead. The other one is the CDHP. It's doing the workforce

behind the scenes. It knows who has equity. It knows who's coming into service. It knows who's

got a recall. It knows who declined services. So when that happens, again, our customers feel like

we're the one reaching out to them and we are. But again, that's some of those tools that we use

that really help us do our job better. So that gives me two questions and I'll come back to the

BDC in just a minute. So you mentioned CDHP. Is that their kind of branded version or variant of

the CDP? Did you cleanse your data recently? How long did that process take and what's been the

benefit of that? So we've been doing that now for a couple of years with them. A great process and

yeah. So again, they know who our customers are, what they're doing in our store and how we can

help them. So and again, the system does that for you. So we're just doing our job and saying

we want to make sure we're reaching out to customers that declined to service. We want to make sure

that we know some customers got a recall. They feel like we're again taking care of them, providing

that great customer experience. So as you went through that process and again, Alexi mentioned

only 20% of dealers probably have. What was some of the most errant or incorrect data that surprised

you that existed in your current DMS, CRM? Yeah, that was the problem. Current DMS and CRM want,

we use VIN solutions and we use rounds of rentals. They don't like each other and they don't talk very

well together. So every time we put a customer came into service, a new league got generating the

system. So if you're a business in my town, all sudden you were in there 20 times. So are we

marketing to that business 20 times or a customer or the phone numbers didn't match or the emails

didn't match or the middle name wasn't right. So that's your help. Let's clean that up and again,

be more cost effective. So when we do market, we're marketing once and not 20 times with somebody.

But two, it also makes sure if I'm a customer and I get an email 20 times like what's the

guys? What are they doing? Yeah. So as you clean that up, Chris, you mentioned your CRM and your

DMS providers. Is that clean version of the information is it bi-directional? Does it still

sit in your CRM DMS cleaned and updated or is it in a separate device reservoir? Yeah,

it's cleaned up, but we're starting to see that some of those same things ripple. So I think the

best way for us is to make sure that those two are in sync. So we're in the process, honestly,

of changing our CRM to make sure it is a clean sync. And when there's a change of a phone number

or a change in finance or a change somewhere, it is immediate in the system because those two will

talk to each other together. So having it clean and having it going back and forth, are you able

to quantify a financial impact or a CSI impact? You mentioned customers get frustrated being

contacted multiple times with multiple messages that are incongruent that just don't match.

Are you, how do you think about ROI and that like dollar spent on that activity?

How do you think about that? Yeah, it's hard to really think about dollars. All I know is this,

I know again, my best ROI is selling cars and customers come back to service. So if part of

that great experience is that they take care of me, they know me, they want me to do business there,

that's the ROI one. Yeah, yeah, interesting. So when you think about speed to lead, so you

mentioned that you don't have a BDC, I'd be curious why, because some groups do, there's

definitely two ways of thinking in there. Why not a BDC? Why do you have the salespeople do it?

And then is there a speed to lead target? And how do you hold your team to it for whoever's

responding to those leads first? Yeah, so speed to lead for us is 15 minutes. It should never

take more than 15 minutes for one of our salespeople to contact you. We round robbing the

leads, but as a manager, if you see somebody is off work that they aren't available and didn't

do that, the CRM, we switch. Or again, we're small enough that the general sales manager myself

will reach out to the customer. I'm never afraid to make that first contact, whether it be text,

make a phone call, because again, we want that customer, we know for that first 15 minutes,

we're not going to get them. So no BDC, I will tell you, we've tried it, we've had one, we've had

a third party BDC. I just want my experts. I want my experts who are my sales guys

in the process the entire time. Yeah, we don't have a, we will always have a receptionist for

the same reason as well. I want a real person during our hours of operation talking to our

customers. I agree with that, by the way. So we've had several guests on here. In fact,

Glenn Lundy, I think it was said, Hey, you know, BDC should be frontline sales. So

however you label them, you still want them customer facing tip of the spear very well

trained. So for larger dealerships, if you need to have a BDC, they've got to be brought in as

part of the sales team. Would you agree with that? Oh, 100%. And again, we're not big. So we don't

have those big dealer problems. But I'll take an advantage of that. Let my sales, you'll be the

experts that take the leads and run with that. So when you think about getting engagement on that,

as you're sending messages out to your customers, what's the first reply that wins the most? When

you think about texting, phone, email, and what does the message say to get that engagement?

Do you have a secret sauce to engagement? Yeah, I think text has to be the first message because

again, when my phone goes off like it did my pocket three seconds ago, I want to see who's

calling me, who's texting me. My emails I check at night when I am, you know, some downtime,

whatever. So there could be 100 in my email box. I'll check that when I have time. But a text just

seemed to have a little more urgency and I want to know who's getting a hold of me. But don't

miss the phone call. I think face to face is the best. You know, our sales success is so much

better face to face. But again, we got to get those customers there. But send that text,

let them know that you're interested, but follow up with the phone call. Email, I could take or

leave to be honest with you. Okay. So how do your sales team, how do they qualify intent fast

without scaring shoppers off? Is there a few questions that you ask? Is there a way that you

engage? Yeah, I think that I think part of that is that welcome message. Thanks for contacting us.

We sure look forward to helping you. Part of that red carpet service. We want this to be the best

carbide experience you've ever had or the best service experience you've ever had. And look

forward to not rushing you, letting you aside in your own time, but making that a good experience.

Yeah. Well, Chris Rudder, general manager, Northcutt Chevrolet,

absolute pleasure having you on the show today, sharing your perspectives and

best practices for upping your game and delivering that ultimate experience to every

single customer. Thanks for being on the show. Yeah. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

You know, and I don't know, I don't know if this is fit to print, but I got a text from the team

here as to their NADA party. So I'm going to say it because it's in the text message.

We rented Allegiant Stadium. So I guess that's what they're doing. Zip lines. I don't know who the

heck DJ Jazzy Jeff is. Actually, I'm kidding. I lie. I actually know exactly who is because

I grew up in the 90s and everybody that knew the 90s knows that. So if this is fit to air and it's

not a industry secret, there you go. If it is, you know, everybody knows it by now. So, but what

a show. We appreciate everybody for being on and the team at DAS for hosting this forum. Again,

there'll be links in the show notes. If you want to go back and check out the best practices that

come out of the session over the few days that this team is out here in Mexico. And to you,

our daily deal live audience, we appreciate you joining the show every Monday, Wednesday, and

Friday. And in particular, all the comments. So YogaCar says Nelly party in Vegas was great.

Eager case is BDC department sometimes out of touch with customers because they don't work deal.

Best people to be doing follow up should be the sales manager and salesman who actually work

the deal. I agree with that. And he also says customer follow up has to be consistent but not

a nuisance. And I think that's what some of the best of the best have solved for is making a more

consistent process. And there's some great technology and teams out there that help it. So

we appreciate you joining us today on this Monday, October 13th. Don't forget we're live here every

Monday, Wednesday, Friday. So if this is your world, hit like, subscribe, turn on those notifications

so you never, ever miss a beat. And we'll see you next episode, everybody from Mexico. Thanks for

being here.

Starkey on After-Sale CX, DAS Tech CEO on Driving Sales, Ruder on Client Growth | Daily Dealer Live

About this episode

McLaughlin Ford

manufacturer incentives

subprime buyers

loan terms

Repair360

Chevrolet

Request an Explanation

Want to learn more?

Help improve this episode

More from Car Dealership Guy Podcast