AutoNation is a big company that owns and runs lots of car dealerships. Here, they’re mentioned as an example of a dealer group that used to build and manage its own software instead of buying from outside companies.
“Best and breed” means you don’t use just one software system for everything. Instead, you pick the best tools from different companies for each job a dealership needs to do.
Term
AI evolution
They’re talking about how AI tools and software have been changing quickly. The point is that dealerships that built their own systems a certain way may struggle to keep up with what AI can do now.
“Vibe coding” means writing software more by guesswork and quick prompts than by careful design and testing. The speaker is saying that approach can backfire, especially when dealerships need reliable systems.
“AI Builders” is a group/channel where dealership people share and discuss building software, especially with AI. The host points to it as an active place to learn from others.
Integrations are how different software programs “talk to each other.” The speaker is saying you can avoid some extra work and expense by reducing how many systems you have to connect.
First-party data is customer information a dealer collects directly itself. It’s the dealer’s “own” customer data, not data it gets from other companies.
DMS data means the information inside a dealership’s computer system. It usually covers things like customer details, leads, and service or sales history.
Ransomware is a cyberattack where someone blocks access to your files and demands money to unlock them. Here, it’s being used to describe dealers losing access to their own customer data.
Snowflake is a cloud service companies use to store and analyze data. Here, it’s being referenced as the place where dealers want their customer data to live so they can use it for reporting and marketing.
Databricks (what they call “data bricks”) is a tool for working with lots of data. It helps companies process and organize data so they can analyze it or build applications.
A data lake is a big storage area where you dump lots of data in one place. The goal is to keep it so you can analyze it later and build new reports or tools.
A CDP is a tool that brings customer information together from different systems. It helps clean and organize the data so marketing teams can use it more effectively.
M&A means one company buying another or two companies combining. For car dealer groups, it can slow down decisions because there are more people involved and more systems to coordinate.
CRM is software that helps a dealership keep track of customers and sales leads. It’s used to follow up, organize conversations, and manage the sales process for new and used cars.
An extended warranty is an aftermarket warranty that extends coverage beyond the factory warranty period. Dealerships often sell it as part of the finance-and-insurance (F&I) menu, and it’s commonly tracked as a separate product category in lead management.
A maintenance package is a bundle of scheduled service work, like routine maintenance for a set time or mileage. Dealers sell these as a plan to keep customers coming back.
An engagement platform is a system that helps a dealership communicate with customers throughout the whole process. The idea is that it shouldn’t only cover one small part of the customer’s journey.
VUCA is a four-part acronym for volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. It’s a way to describe confusing, fast-changing situations where planning is harder.
Dealers split their business into two big buckets. “Fixed operations” usually means the service and parts side—like repairs and maintenance—rather than selling cars.
Term
FNAI department
Dealers often have a finance-and-paperwork team. “FNAI” is shorthand for the department that helps arrange financing and related add-ons when you buy a car.
These are customer permission settings for marketing messages. Opt-in means they agree to get them, and opt-out means they can stop them—so the dealership has to follow the customer’s choice.
A “system of record” is the one place that’s considered the official truth for customer information. The goal is to avoid having different departments store conflicting customer details.
The idea is to make sure the dealership treats you as one customer across both buying and service. Instead of sales and service acting separately, they should coordinate so messages make sense when you’re in the shop.
“Fragmentation” here means the dealership’s computer systems don’t share information with each other. So different teams end up working with separate, incomplete data.
Concept
monopoly on the system
He’s saying that a few big companies controlled the main tools and data pathways dealerships rely on. When that happens, it’s harder for newer tools to connect everything together.
“Silo departments” describes an organization where teams operate independently and don’t effectively share information. In dealerships, this can slow down follow-up and reduce the quality of the customer experience.
The Ford Bronco is a rugged SUV that’s meant for off-road driving. Here, it’s just an example of a car he bought using the kind of digital shopping process dealerships want to support.
Digital retailing just means buying a car online. Instead of doing everything in the dealership, you use a website or app to go from browsing to placing an order.
OEMs are the car companies themselves. They often control what tools dealers must use and how data and software integrations work.
Term
smart path
“Smart path” sounds like Toyota’s branded system for how dealers handle certain digital steps. The speaker is saying these kinds of branded tools can make integrations more complicated.
“Signals” likely means the data messages a system sends—like tracking updates—so the automaker and dealer can stay in sync. It’s part of why the software setup can get complicated.
RP here sounds like a software platform that helps run the dealership’s sales process. It’s the kind of tool that supports how deals get built and processed, not just a simple app.
“Form factor” just means what the device or input method looks like and how you use it. Here, they’re talking about whether it’s easier to enter information by speaking instead of typing.
“AI” means computer software that can do smart tasks, like understanding what you say. In this context, it helps dealers fill in customer info quickly instead of making people type everything.
DriveCentric is a software system dealerships use. In this episode, they’re talking about how it uses AI to help capture customer details faster, including by voice.
“Genius Voice Assist” is a voice feature inside the DriveCentric system. Instead of typing everything, a salesperson or customer can speak, and the software fills in the information for them.
Ray-Ban is a well-known glasses brand. The speaker is talking about using smart-glasses like Ray-Ban’s as a tool for work—rather than just regular eyewear.
A multipoint inspection is a step-by-step checklist a technician uses to look over a car in many different spots. Instead of just saying “it looks okay,” they record what they checked and what they found.
AI glasses are smart glasses that can use a camera and computer smarts to understand what you’re looking at. In this context, they’d help a technician make sure they didn’t miss any inspection steps.
A long “contract” here refers to a dealership’s agreement with a technology vendor, which can lock the dealer into a specific system or workflow. The guest’s point is that being stuck for years makes it harder to switch to better tools even when the industry changes.
Company
Drive Sanctuary
“Drive Sanctuary” sounds like a name that got transcribed incorrectly. It’s probably referring to the same dealership software brand the guest was talking about.
LIVE
Ladies and gentlemen, I got punched in the eye, hence why you see me with glasses.
But I'm thrilled to be joined by Matt Leone, CEO of DriveCentric.
It's awesome to be here.
Thanks for having me.
Thanks for, you know, joining me here in my new look.
I did not get punched in the eye, I actually just had some like eye sensitivity.
And so we'll have to be a little, I'll alternate a little bit here.
Right in sunny in Florida, you got to wear sunglasses.
Let's talk about, you know, getting thrown some punches.
There is this big trend that I want you to pine on of, which is dealers building their
own software.
I've had this conversation on the podcast, I've had it off the podcast.
You're someone that builds software for thousands of dealers and that touches the hands of tens
of millions of consumers.
Is this a fool's errand?
Are we heading for a disaster with dealers building their own software or is this the
right thing?
Is this what the future is going to be like?
Yeah, it's a great question.
And, you know, I've been in software now my old career, 25 years in software and it
ebbs and flows.
And one of the things that was a hot trend is, you know, tech consolidation and then
it goes to best and brave, then goes back to tech consolidation as new innovation comes
along.
And you saw a lot of dealer groups, probably in the nineties and 2000s, trying to build
their own software.
And there's still some out there doing, I mean, AutoNation was famous for when I have
everything controlled and managed and built by myself.
And then you started to see probably in the last 15, 20 years, more dealerships kind of
say, hey, look, I'm going to go with best and breed software out there.
And then all of a sudden this AI evolution came along and you've run the risk of...
Vibe coding.
It didn't work with dealer groups building their own software.
It's just too hard and it's too expensive and the long run never pans out.
Now, all of a sudden you have individuals trying to build software and vibe coding
things and there's some pros and I see all the pros and then there's some big cons.
And I think, you know, there's going to be a catch up here and pay the piper for trying
to talk about that.
Yeah, there's probably safe ways to actually go about doing it.
I just think that we're on the cusp of it and many people haven't thought it through
completely yet.
I mentioned this, but we have a channel in circles specifically dedicated to dealers
who are building software.
It's called AI Builders.
It's the most active channel in circles.
It's awesome.
And I want to never discourage somebody from going down the path because you can customize
it to your dealership needs.
You could do it cheaper.
You could avoid a lot of fees and costs and integrations.
You could spin it up quickly.
You could modify it quickly.
There's so many pros to doing it and I see all the pros.
I don't think a lot of dealer groups and owner principals have thought about the cons of
it though and the long term risk that you run with doing something like that.
No one wants to build their software.
What they want is software that's fully tailored to their needs and bespoke to them.
Do you agree with that?
I agree.
There's also an element of I could do it cheaper and quicker.
So there's a cost component and then there's the customization component.
I think those two are probably the leading reasons why somebody wants to go do this.
I think the cost part is like a fallacy.
I don't think when you actually put the time and effort in place, it probably ends up
being more expensive.
Maybe in certain cases, it actually is true.
And by the way, if you can actually build it in a cheaper way, then you probably were
overpaying for that piece of software to begin with because it was just a shell and it wasn't
some sophisticated back-end and security and whatnot.
The point I want to make though is why you as a CEO of a very prominent CRM platform,
why are you not building a department of like forward deployed engineers or some service
of the sorts and assessing the market need and sending these people to dealerships?
So I think that that's a path and people go down that path.
It's expensive.
You have to have a managed service department.
You have to have like deployed engineers and human capital that you're investing in.
You know, the way I think of the industry where it's going to head, you know, it started,
I'll go through the history where I see the last five years of the history of kind of
this, I want to control my own data.
What happened?
Dealing ships were saying, I want to control my first party data as my number one asset.
I've all this DMS data, all this consumer data and 10,000 vendors have access to it.
That's not good.
And I'm paying ransomware to all these DMS providers to get access to my own data.
That's not good.
So what did they go on do?
They went off and built their data lakes, their snowflakes, their data bricks, their
sort of environment to say, I want to control my data.
And then CDPs popped up and said, okay, well, I'm going to have to cleanse this data.
I'm going to put a CDP so I could then say, I have access to marketing on top of that data.
Then it was, well, I need better reporting.
I'm going to load in my payroll information and sensitive and I want vendors to see that.
So I want to put it back in snowflakes.
So I have my data there, maybe cleanse through a CDP and I can kind of manage it all there.
And so that was kind of the last five years or so of attempts and failures of this is
what we want to do and why.
Now, people are saying, I want all my data here so I could build some extensions off of it.
So can I extract all my data out of the CRM and other DMS and let me put it in snowflake
or some other system so I could build extensions off of it and build my own things off of it?
And I think that that's admirable and I think that's right path.
But I think the approaches may be flawed.
And in my view and DriveCentrics view is why don't you let the experts, the vendors that
you trust and the vendors that you work with build you a snowflake instance, give the access
and permissions for you to have the extensions, we'll keep it cleansed and enriched and connected
to your operating platform.
So let's say you have DriveCentric as your operating platform to run your dealership.
Then you have kind of a snowflake instance that's hosted and managed by DriveCentric.
If we partition that off and we say, go build your little widgets, go build your apps off
that, go build your AI tools off of that.
We're going to give you an environment called AI Labs that will be your instruction guide.
Here's how to go build these.
And if you want the support layer, the compliance layer, the security layer, the, you know, all
the stuff that vendors have to do, I mean, we have to go get SOC2 compliant.
We have to go get ISO compliant.
We have to have the security means spend millions on all these security apparatus and software
packages to ensure that data is secured.
If you're off doing it over here, you're never going to get there.
You're going to have support problems, training problems, integration problems, and you're
missing all the other stuff that vendors do for you.
But if you could do it in a way where DriveCentric could perhaps provide that for you as a service,
I don't have to deploy engineers to go write software for you.
I could give you the instructions off of your own data in a secured way and let you have full
access rights to it.
By giving them more customizability.
Yes, but in a secured extension out of the operating platform, so not building customizations
directly in the traditional CRM of DriveCentric, building it off a secondary instance that we're
managing for you.
So what would you say is the secret to dealer happiness?
This is one of the things I find fascinating about the company that you're leading.
It's just on objectively speaking, on our platform, it has one of the highest net promoter
scores amongst dealers.
And to me, I always like to understand like, what is someone doing or what are they not
doing that leads to customer happiness?
In your perspective, what is the explanation to that?
The World Cup was just going on.
It's just what popped in my head.
And you think about a referee in the World Cup.
I hope we're not talking about the USA game.
It was a disaster, but it was a fun ride while it lasted.
It was. Who are we betting on now, Norway?
This is like the trend.
Everyone's betting on Norway.
I got my kids doing this at home.
I thought it was pretty fun.
So you wake up in the morning.
But, you know, if you think about like a ref, what's the best thing in baseball or
soccer and sport is when you don't notice the referee.
If the referee is not part of the game, as soon as the referee becomes part of the
game, it's a problem.
People complain and there's the issues.
Same thing with a really well run software company.
If I don't think about it, it just works.
It's up.
I get the support.
I know I'm happy with it.
My end users are happy with it.
You don't have to complain about it.
You don't have to have issues in a lot of software that I've been around.
There's bugs, there's issues.
It goes down.
It's not integrated.
Doesn't do this, doesn't do that.
There's no response.
The support sucks.
And then all of a sudden you just don't like it and you're just stuck with it.
And you're just like, I don't want to make the change.
It's a pain.
But if you wake up and you're like, Hey, my end users love this thing and tend to
want to use it and you don't have to force it on them.
And you wrap some really nice support around that.
You know, you have a pretty good winning formula in the software industry.
If you could make it painless, make it just work, have a really good product.
You're onto something.
This episode is brought to you by Digital Dealer.
At Digital Dealer 2026, every session is built around the problems your
dealership is actually facing.
Think lower cost per acquisition, tighter lead follow up, stronger service
retention and AI workflows you build in the room.
45 minute sessions and hands on learning labs across marketing, sales,
fix stops and AI give you a list of changes to make when you get back to your
dealership.
No theory, just real strategies that move your numbers.
September 22nd to 23rd in Detroit.
Register at digital dealer.com or click the link in the show notes below.
So on that note, I think one of the best analogies I've seen is always looking
at any product as an obstacle to me getting what I want.
Right.
I don't want to use your product.
I want to sell a car or whatever it may be, right?
But everything is just an obstacle.
And if I could just say it out loud and it would happen, I would do that, but I
can, so I have to do this with that said, tell me more about the changes you're
observing at dealerships.
And like, I like to think of, are we, I say, we look at dealers in three main buckets,
right?
There's like the single stores, there's the small groups, then there's the large,
the mega groups.
Yeah.
And so when you think about these buckets of, and of course, there's anything
in between, but when you think about that, you know, simplistically, what type
of like tech changes are you seeing happening across these three different vectors?
Right.
Like, are you seeing more technological change on the single groups versus the
mega groups, right?
First, like, how should we think about just the dealership evolving?
Yeah, maybe I'll break it down in two ways, because there's a macro and the
micro kind of view of the dealership world, then there's the tech landscape of it.
You know, when I first got into auto, everybody was like, oh, there's going
to be all this consolidation, it's going to be shrinking of footprint of franchises.
And you read some of the articles, you know, like record Q1 consolidation or
MNA happening, you're like, yeah, but the actual macro view of single points to
small dealer groups, to enterprise dealer groups really hasn't changed.
Like that macro view for the last 10 years is about the same.
And there's about the same amount of rooftops.
Now, sure, Buick has shrunk and, you know, there's certain brands that have
shrunk and then others have increased, but the macro view is roughly this.
How is that possible that there's been so much consolidation?
You know, it's been shifting of single points, maybe a little bit more into
smaller dealer groups, not your enterprise larger dealer groups of 50 more units.
But, you know, when you look at the percent that native pubs out since 2019,
that percentage distribution, you're talking about one or two percent
differential to me on a macro view, that isn't really consolidation.
There is happens to be a lot of buy sells happening, especially right now.
But when you look at the macro trend of the distribution, it's, it's roughly the
same when you think about tech in these different three segments, single
points, midsize groups, enterprise groups.
I think the trends are fairly the same too.
Enterprise groups just move slower.
They just take a while to make decisions, to roll out things and, you know,
to, to move toward a direction during a kind of three to five year planning
cycle of this is what we're going to go do.
And it may be a year long rollout.
Your midsize groups can absorb stuff and do things instantaneously.
They could be like, Hey, I want to switch out my CRM.
I want to move fast.
And your single points can try out a bunch of different things and make lots
of different, you know, switches and changes, but they tend to like what they
have and stay with it for a while because they're used to it.
So routine is our process where your midsize groups, since they're doing a
little bit of more M&A, they're seeing other vendors, they're getting different
talent, they're seeing different things that work and don't work.
And so, you know, for them, that's where we see our sweet spot of a lot of our
growth.
Now, from a technology perspective, you know, I've been on this crusade of
trying to convince the industry that, you know, the CRM category itself is, you
know, needs to evolve.
It cannot be looked at where the most people look at a CRM, which is going to
manage my sales team for new and used cars and manage my leads.
That is the classic term for CRM since the 80s.
And, you know, I think the CRM category itself, for whether you're a small
dealership, single point, you're a midsize or enterprise, if that's the only
way you look at a CRM, then you're biting off like one-tenth of what your iPhone
can do or what you're...
Well, then you're better off vibe coding.
You're better off...
Or you're better off just having an agency manage your leads.
Yeah, there was an article that just came out in the local newspaper in some
city about a company that was spending $100,000 a year on Salesforce, but they
were using like one percent of what you just mentioned and they vibe coded it
using Replitter.
And obviously, I'm sure they pushed this as like a press beast, but it's true.
It seems to be that they actually, you know, went off their CRM in their case.
Well, I look at just avalanche of things that are happening in the industry.
You have FTC compliance in the CARS Act.
You have margin pressure on new and used cars, increased profitability issues
of consumers.
You still have consumers holding onto cars way too long.
And so there's a shift back into, you know, fixed ops and to, you know, looking
at FNI and profitability there.
Well, what's happened?
You put all these dollars in native publishers is every year and we look
at it every year.
How much do we spend in variable side of the business?
Three quarters.
And it's mostly all in marketing, not in your operational tools.
And that's good.
You probably don't want to spend a ton on your accounting system or your
finance system or your tax system, which is to me, the DMS.
You want to spend it on sales and marketing, but the cost per unit sold and
the average cars sold by sales rep hasn't really changed.
But yet we keep pumping tons of money in that one particular category.
If you think of the CRM as saying, Hey, this can manage my leads that are
not just my sales leads.
I can manage my service leads.
It can manage my FNI leads.
It can manage my declined service leads.
It can manage my having to follow up with somebody that didn't buy FNI and an
advantage shopper that maybe want to come back in and get that later.
Extended warranty, a maintenance package.
Why isn't it across the board used?
And that to me is, you know, the future of where I think technology is going to
have to force dealerships into, which is, Hey, this is one platform is going to
manage your revenue, your operations of your dealership.
It's not going to manage your accounting, your finance and your tax.
And, you know, that stuff.
What it is going to do is manage your complete sales and marketing.
And let's stop thinking of sales and marketing as just the salesperson or your
BDC. Let's think of it across the board, because that's how a consumer looks at it.
And if you are an engagement platform and you're engaging with consumers, why am
I only talking to the consumer one tenth of their journey that they do every five
to 10 years?
Why aren't we talking to that consumer throughout their life cycle?
That's going to increase dealer profitability.
It's going to treat customer satisfaction, loyalty.
It does so much goodness for you, but you've got to look at the CRM as something
different than something just traditional sales.
How is it that there's this mismatch where there's some, you know, not great
software being out there used by potentially great dealerships?
What does that tell us?
Is the software actually that important?
You know, is it just a, I mean, it is an enabler, but what do you think about that?
Well, change is hard.
First of all, nobody likes change ripping out a DMS or ripping out a CRM is
not that people are excited about doing.
And I get that piece, but I think the best thing in my life is change.
Like I look at a funny term that I use throughout my whole career.
It's called VUCA.
My dad was in the military and VUCA stands for volatility, uncertainty,
complexity, ambiguity.
And it was a term the military used during the conversion from the Cold War,
where we were fighting people in uniforms to the war on terrorism.
And they needed an acronym to understand how do we deal with this VUCA world?
How do we deal with a world of which there's vulnerability, uncertainty,
complexity, ambiguity?
The heart of that answer is like, you got to embrace the idea of like,
it's constantly changing.
And if you're stuck on technology that's 15, 20 years old and you just worry
about change and the change management exercise, look at DriveCentric.
We don't go on site to deploy software.
We do it completely virtual in about 30 days.
To wrap somebody's head around that, that's not used to that.
That might be on a legacy platform that was 15 years old and customized
to their exact specs and needs to say, hey, I'm going to move to this thing
that's not customized.
I'm going to have a virtual team launch me and do all the training remotely.
It, it, it's scary for a lot of people.
And they're like, whoa, but understanding and embracing that change,
I think is step one of that, that journey.
And then, you know, the other reason I think that pops up quite a bit is,
you know, you're not just ripping out one thing.
You're not just ripping out a legacy CRM.
You're probably ripping out five or six different vendors that were all
bolt-ons to prop up that legacy system.
Now I challenge anybody in your audience to look at their tech stack and say,
I've really sat down and looked at every different tool that's used
across all my departments that's talking to a customer.
It's pretty scary.
And when you really think about how scary that is, you're dealing with
compliance issues now, you're dealing with, you know, a waste of outreach
that's, you know, probably not needed in CSAT issues, plus just cost, plus
managing all the vendors, plus all your data going to all these different sources.
So when you consolidate the tech stack into drive centric, you're probably
replacing five different, maybe sometimes seven different software vendors
into one.
And that is also amplifies that change management concern and fear.
It makes sense.
And so what's, what's your perspective on bolt-ons?
I have a ying and yang opinion on that one, which is I would love everybody
to be purely on drive centric and get rid of every bolt-on.
I think that's unpractical.
And when I say it's not practical is there's various reasons why people
want a bolt-on to a CRM system.
And there are certain things drive centric will never do.
Comply out as a great example of it.
They're really good at their niche from compliance perspective.
We're never going to be a compliance company.
Well, let's integrate with them.
The way I look at bolt-ons is, you know, if it's Cordo talking to a customer,
it should probably not be a bolt-on.
But if it's ancillary to it, like a compliance thing, then yeah, there's
reasons to do it, but anytime you have a bolt-on, it has to be bi-directional API.
You have to be able to share data back and forth through.
We created a partner hub within, you know, drive centric to be able to say,
if you're in the partner hub of drive centric, you have full integration
access both directions to drive centric, then I fully support the idea of a bolt-on.
But, you know, even the APIs are changing, right?
Like the idea of APIs is very 80s and 90s.
And I think we're quickly moving to an NCP layer.
Agents to agents talking to each other.
And again, if I went back to the AI labs where I could give an extension to a
dealership to build their own agents and say, customize the way you want.
Here's the instruction book.
Here's the data we will manage and support it for you.
The only way that's possible is through an NCP layer and accessing that is kind
of the next chapter of integration for bolt-ons.
If you're not on an MCP, you really can't manage the integration anymore.
So MCP API, right?
All these different types of integrations.
But how are you actually identifying the next pain point to solve for dealers?
Everything you just mentioned is important, right?
I have a serum.
I may want a bolt-on solution.
I may need that for to solve whatever issue I'm dealing with today in the industry.
How are you identifying the most important pain points?
It's funny to say this out loud.
It's not rocket science.
It's an age-old problem.
It just hasn't been solved.
There are four departments in a dealership, sometimes just three.
You have your variables, new and used cars.
Sometimes they're separated.
Sometimes they're together.
You have your fixed operations.
You have your FNAI department.
You have your parts.
I've got Darwin over here.
I've got maybe X time over there.
I've got maybe E leads over here with some other DMS over there,
with some other system with my part system.
All of them talking to a customer, all with different payment processes,
all with different communication, opt-in, opt-out.
What I'm trying to solve for the industry, what I'm trying to build in
dry-centric is there's got to be a better way to solve this.
How do we have all engagement with a customer managing one platform?
If we don't directly manage it, how do we integrate it
where we become the system of record?
The pain point is, how do I connect sales and service?
How do I connect sales to FNAI to service?
How do I connect service back into sales?
How do I go to that consumer and say,
I want to stop trying to sell you a car every time you're in the service drive.
Maybe I want to send you an extended maintenance package or something.
How do we do that effectively and do it through
either humans or agents in a consistent way
the dealership wants to talk to their customers?
That, to me, is the main pain point I'm trying to solve,
is it's completely fragmented.
There's 23 decades worth of auto tech that's spung up
with four or five prominent players that have had a monopoly on the system
for quite some time, tapped acquiring companies, never stitched them together.
And what are you left with?
You're left with systems that aren't talking to each other,
fragmentation, silo departments, it's got to be a better way.
And so there's a lot of cool new tech companies that have sprung up,
drives under one of them.
There's quite a few others that are trying to focus on this and say,
hey, listen, there's got to be a better way.
Let's have technology the last 20 years evolved so much.
Let's try a different approach to this because some of the stats
are not great stats of efficiency in a dealership.
Part of that is technology can help there.
And if technology can help and do it in an efficient way,
hopefully drive centric leads that pack.
Do you think like we're over optimizing or?
You know, as a consumer, right?
I'm going to talk to myself as a consumer, not a CEO of a software vendor for auto.
I bought my son a Ford Bronco recently, just turned 17.
I bought him a Ford Bronco.
When I go in to buy a car, of course, I'm doing the digital as much as I can.
I want to do it remotely as much as I can.
I want it to be painless.
I want it to be carvanish-ishy.
You know, it should be.
As a consumer, why are we making this difficult?
And so I went into a dealership.
I happened to run Drive centric and I said, listen, I want to see this end to end.
I want to walk through this entire process with you and see what I what I see from both ends.
And then I want to experience the service process and the F and I process
and the desking process when I get into the service lane,
you know, they have maybe a UVI or a Viper and, you know, they take the pictures
and they send me some outreach and they're trying to sell me a car.
And I'm like, hey, listen, literally just bought this car.
You don't need to try to sell me a new car or a post purchase.
And this wasn't a Drive centric customer, but, you know, I don't want that experience,
but I see it happening all the time, which is, you know, I'm a year into the car.
I'm under equity.
I'm, you know, I just bought a car and you're trying to sell me a new car.
Why the industry has been wired for move metal.
That's what we have to do.
It's how we have to do things.
Instead of looking at the industry saying, how do I get lifetime value out of this customer?
How do I make this customer experience wonderful?
Like as if they're at a Marriott and checked in and they're a platinum customer.
We don't think of it that way.
We think of it in the industry as I have to move as much metal as possible
and sell many units as possible because I want to be the number one
ex dealership in my region selling the most cars.
But what does most of every other industry say, right?
If you tend attention to your customer and you give them a wonderful experience,
you buy loyalty, you buy that BP business.
And I think we focus here with the hope this happens.
And I kind of want to say, let's focus here and this will happen.
Do you think, though, that that is driven, at least in part,
by the OEMs mandating certain software?
Like I platformed about a year ago, brought on the platform,
someone that was just talking about, hey, I reached out to this dealership.
I got messages from four different platforms.
Oh, and by the way, the OEM mandates that and this and that.
And so I had to have several different things that are competing
for the attention of the customer.
There's like all these perverse incentives.
It's just complicated.
Now, add two or three other layers of complexity to this.
A lot of dealer groups, big ones, even publics,
have started investing in software companies and saying,
we're going to not only deploy this offer, we're going to be an investor
in the software and try to actually start to resell this process.
There's some complexity with that, too.
Same.
Then you have OEMs that are saying, oh, you have to use this
software or that software for your website or your digital retailing.
And you're not going to get co-op for this or that.
And I need all the data sent back.
And then the dealer group saying, well, I don't want you to send all my data back.
And it's just there's a mountain of complexity to enter this space.
Do I think the OEMs have complicated it with their own vendors?
Yeah. Toyota has got their smart path and their signals.
And you've got all these different complexities that are out there of different tools.
But I've seen that being kind of loosened and pulled back recently.
I think less and less OEMs are trying to force a software onto the dealerships.
I think it was a pretty big trend, I don't know, 57 years ago.
I think it's pulled back a little bit.
I also see a lot of dealer groups pulling back on trying to customize
and build their own software, not the apps we were talking about before,
but any RP or a DMS.
But yeah, fraught with complexities with OEMs.
This episode is brought to you by Open Lane,
who are once again cranking up the volume on summer sales
with the return of their popular summer sales event Dealer Fest.
For the entire month of July, the more you transact on Open Lane,
the more opportunities to unlock incredible prizes.
From now until July 31st, you'll earn points for every vehicle you buy, sell
and transport through Open Lane.
The more points you earn, the bigger prizes you can win.
New dealers who sign up receive up to $2,500 in fee credits.
Learn more and sign up right now at openlane.com slash Dealer Fest
or click the link in the show notes below.
What do you think about form factor?
I know right now there's been, I'd say, a bigger push into audio
for just inputting information.
I actually I'm not saying this is the norm,
but I personally bought one of those like foot pedals where I can just,
you know, press it, you know, talk to whisper flow,
what you want to say very well.
Yeah. Jots are down, can throw it right into AI.
So just quicker than typing in many cases.
Are you investing a lot in audio?
Do you think that that's just, yeah, like a quicker, more effective way
for a salesperson putting information?
Think about it. I mean, I remember, I remember sitting customers down
computer, hey, like put all your information, this long ass app.
You could just literally look at a screen say da, da.
And this isn't Siri, we're talking about.
This is much better technology that boom, pre fills it in like 15 seconds.
We rolled out last year, a feature, our AI is called Genius.
And then dealerships branded their own term or name.
Genius has been around in DriveCentric now 67 years.
In Genius, we built a Genius Voice Assist feature.
It just comes with your package of DriveCentric.
And when you have Genius Voice Assist turned on,
you could literally just say, hey, who am I meeting with today?
I'll work, drive into work.
I'll tell you, hey, you got these five appointments.
This is all about this person.
I was just at Nilo a couple of weeks ago out in Sacramento.
And one of the GM's had tried to build her own app.
And I was trying to ask him a little bit more about it.
And he's like, if you could build this for me, that would be excellent.
I go, what did you build?
And he's like, it was a basic voice to text.
I'm out talking to customers all the time.
I know DriveCentric is mobile.
But, you know, if I'm running around like a mad person,
I don't remember the lady at the blue dress that was in looking at this car.
She had to run out.
I just want to be able to talk to my phone and give a quick update,
write down some notes and have it populate my CRM.
I was like, well, that's Genius Voice Assist.
We could knock that out for you pretty quickly.
But that concept of how do I automate as much as possible through voice
is such a native feature of DriveCentric to be able to say,
of course, that should be how DriveCentric works.
Why are we typing in classic notes still?
It's hard to query.
It's hard to search notes.
But if you could have a voice to form, voice to text, so much better.
And you could just jot down a couple of things were in your head
and you're off to the races.
So yeah, that's definitely the path we're investing quite a bit in.
The big one where I'm seeing a lot of investment as well go into is the Ray-Ban glasses.
Yes, that's a bit more I think that there's time for that.
Well, we have a native video in DriveCentric.
And as we get into fixed operations more and more,
you know, we already do the walk around in the video with the sales team.
But your technicians need to be able to do a multipoint inspection and pick up on
did, in fact, the tech show everything in the car.
And can you use something like an AI glasses to be able to detect
did they do it or not and let them redo it if they missed something?
Seems like a very logical extension for us to build natively.
Yeah. And by the way, that I think makes total sense, right?
In the shop, yeah, techs already wear glasses.
Anyways, protective glasses make sense.
Yeah, you know, you're at the forefront here of this, you know, revolution
happening here with technology and industry.
Are you encouraging your kids to come into this industry, given what you know?
That's a great question. I have three boys, 17, 14 and eight.
Right now, I'm just trying to get them off to school successfully, you know,
maybe hopefully off to a nice college and stuff.
But where they choose their path in life, you know, I'm going to totally leave up to them.
You know, I stumbled on software.
It wasn't it wasn't something I set out to say in college, hey, I'm going to be in software.
You know, I studied finance.
I thought it was going to be an investment banker and work Wall Street.
And that's what I did.
Ever since I was like 12 years old, that's what I wanted to do.
And I worked for San Francisco for an investment firm and loved it.
And they picked a young kid out of college and said, hey, you must know something about software.
I didn't know anything about software.
Put me on a project.
So I think even if I was to encourage my kids to try something,
life takes lots of twists and turns and you never know where you actually land with your career.
And so, you know, my hope for them would be learn technology,
learn the fact how fast technology can advance things.
Don't be relying on technology, though.
You know, I look at still even in my own company, people that send me decks or financial reports.
And it's all, you know, AI driven.
Did you spend any thought process into this?
Did you do any fact checking?
Or did you do any sort of Q&A on this?
We're getting so reliant on technology.
I think there's, you know, some penalties.
I think you're saying, don't outsource your thinking.
Totally.
I was listening to a podcast and you're talking about how like everything's been so inflationary.
And even like this is going to sound a little silly, but even the concept of a billionaire is inflationary already.
It was basically getting down to like, what is the next level of like form of differentiation in the marketplace?
I think this is very relevant to our industry, in anyone in their industry, really.
But it was just talking about how it's, it comes down to telling a story, right?
Being able to market yourself, you know, be a human.
And how that is kind of the next level of differentiation.
You see all these people that are very successful by media companies.
They want to control the narrative.
And that's just one manifestation of it.
But ultimately it got me thinking like, look, you know, storytelling, the idea, the creativity is becoming such an important trait, asset to just any form of success.
And I don't see that any differently in our industry.
Or, you know, whether it's my kids or car business, I think if you can tell a good story, you know, there's, of course, the famous book, Unreasonable Hospitality.
By Will Godiara, that a lot of dealers subscribe to.
And, you know, like he says, put, I think one of his stories is like, you know, he put, he puts a gift card in everyone's glove box.
So when someone buys a card, first time they open a glove box, you see a gift card, delight.
But it's like these touches, these human touches are just so valuable to brand building, which ultimately is obviously very, you know, very much aligned with any company's long term financial interest.
So, yeah, it's, it's things like this that I think about, like, you know, what is going to continue and increasingly matter in a world where more and is commoditized, whether it's the software that's, you know, letting the customer truly do more of the sale themselves, it's going to come down to brand.
Yeah, well, if you go back to your question about, you know, what do I hope for my kids getting in the industry, what I want to learn out of this industry is it's still a people industry.
And the people in this industry, I look at this particular industry of auto, and I've seen a lot of different industries in my software career.
Auto industry is like quintessential, all American, it's bootstrapped people, it's entrepreneurial, it's people business, it is, if you bubbled up a Rockwell painting and you said, put this and make this AI look like an industry, you would say auto.
And you look at the people you meet in this industry, still a lot of handshakes, still a lot of in person meetings.
And yes, there's technology goes with it, but boy, I'd hope my kids could just be good people that have good people skills.
That'd be awesome that they could take that out of the industry, awesome.
You know, selling cars, selling tires, selling, you know, brakes, doing mechanic work.
If that's what they want to do in their life, God bless them, they'll do it.
You know, if they want to do, you know, something else, you know, I don't know which path they're going to go down in life, but you'd be a good person and have some basic human skills.
Don't sit behind a laptop your whole life.
Don't sit behind a famous last word.
So you run a software company.
So Matt, as we wrap up, we look back, we look back three years at the dealers that did things the right way today, in light of the change and technology and all just access to all these new tools.
What do you think, if we had looked back, what do you think those dealers did differently or better than others?
When I look at a really well run operating dealership and there's several that I'm working with right now, they're already treating their people right, which means they're treating the customers right.
They're just good people, good operators, they're running a good business.
But when they treat their vendors like a real partner and they're like, hey, I'm rooting for you and, you know, I hope you're rooting for me and we're going to get into this together.
And there's sort of like a joint venture you're on.
You can do some really cool things, but it's taking that leap of faith of, hey, I want to change.
I want to try something different.
I want to pick a vendor that's going to work with me to figure out how to get this to work for my dealership and my group, but then keep pushing the envelope because it's not okay just to be in sales and marketing with a tool.
You've got to push it into fixed operations.
You've got to push in FNI.
You just have to keep pushing the envelope and you got to start looking at all the other tech and say, what can I replace safely, securely and consolidation and keep pushing your vendor, whether it's drive center or somebody else to say, this is the path we want to go on to make it just better experience for the consumer.
And if that is the wrong vendor, you got to question that if you're in a 23 year contract and you're just stuck.
Is that the right answer?
And I think a lot of people are stuck and they're stuck because of something and I don't know, we'll ever accelerate the industry to a better place unless we keep pushing the envelope.
Amazing said.
Matt Leone, Drive Sanctuary Matt, thanks as always for coming on.
This was great.
Great to be here.
Thank you.
All right.
Hope you enjoyed that episode.
Please give the podcast a rating, consider subscribing to the show and check the show notes for links to the sponsors of today's episode, digital dealer, open lane and of course drive centric.
Thanks for tuning in and I'll see you guys next time.
About this episode
Dealers are trying to control their own software and customer data, but the conversation argues that the AI era and fragmented systems make DIY approaches risky and expensive. Matt Leone of DriveCentric describes why groups moved toward “best and breed” tools, how vendor access can feel like “ransom,” and what a dealer-controlled, vendor-secured data environment looks like. The episode also covers tech consolidation, integration requirements, and how CRM should connect sales, service, and F&I for a smoother customer experience.
Today I'm joined by Matt Leone, CEO at DriveCentric.
Matt breaks down why one dealer group ditched a $100,000 Salesforce contract they were barely using, why building your own software rarely pays off the way it promises, and why the next fight in the industry is over who actually owns the customer relationship.
Topics:
06:00 The Referee Analogy For Software.
11:50 Consolidation Isn't Happening.
18:30 You're Replacing 7 Vendors.
24:50 Why They Sell You A Car Post-Purchase.
35:10 Auto Is Still A Handshake Industry.
This episode is brought to you by:
1. Digital Dealer - At Digital Dealer 2026, every session is built around the problems your dealership is actually facing. No theory, just real strategies that move your numbers. September 22-23 in Detroit. Register @ here.
2. Openlane - During DealerFest 2026, you’ll earn points for every vehicle you buy, sell and transport through OPENLANE in July. The more points you earn, the bigger prizes you can win. Learn more @ here.
3. DriveCentric - DriveCentric puts dealerships in the Fast Lane to the Customer with a modern engagement platform built to move faster. Visit @ here for more info.
Check out Car Dealership Guy’s stuff:
For dealers:
CDG Circles ➤ https://cdgcircles.com/
Industry job board ➤ http://jobs.dealershipguy.com
Dealership recruiting ➤ http://www.cdgrecruiting.com
Fix your dealership’s social media ➤ http://www.trynomad.co
Request to be a podcast guest ➤ http://www.cdgguest.com
For industry vendors:
Advertise with Car Dealership Guy ➤ http://www.cdgpartner.com
Industry job board ➤ http://jobs.dealershipguy.com
Request to be a podcast guest ➤ http://www.cdgguest.com
Car Dealership Guy Socials:
X ➤ x.com/GuyDealership
Instagram ➤ instagram.com/cardealershipguy/
TikTok ➤ tiktok.com/@guydealership
LinkedIn ➤ linkedin.com/company/cardealershipguy
Threads ➤ threads.net/@cardealershipguy
Facebook ➤ facebook.com/profile.php?id=100077402857683
Everything else ➤ dealershipguy.com
