Dealer Tech Tuesdays
S01E04 - CRM Post Mortem - Drive Centric - CDK - Reynolds - DealerTrack - VAuto
Dealer Tech Tuesday is a podcast and Clubhouse room on the Automotive Innovations Club. It airs at 2pm EST every Tuesday. It is a discussion and QA for anyone in the automotive space. VTech Dealer IT hosts the show, bringing in experts in their respective field.
This week we go over how CRMs and DMSs are changing and how those changes bring new features that benefit dealerships.
Guest Name: Kyle Mountsier (contagiousauto.com)
Song: For Today by Jaialai
Visit us at: https://www.vtechdealerit.com/247-it-support/
Dealer Tech Tuesday is a podcast and Clubhouse room on the Automotive Innovations Club. It airs at 2pm EST every Tuesday. It is a discussion and QA for anyone in the automotive space. VTech Dealer IT hosts the show, bringing in experts in their respective field.
This week we go over how CRMs and DMSs are changing and how those changes bring new features that benefit dealerships.
Guest Name: Kyle Mountsier (contagiousauto.com)
Song: For Today by Jaialai
Visit us at: https://www.vtechdealerit.com/247-it-support/
So welcome everybody to Dealer Tech Tuesdays. This is obviously recorded, so anybody that is in the room please be aware that this is a recorded podcast on Clubhouse and it's going to be on Apple Podcastshouse. Kyle Montsier, from the Nelson Automotive Group and from the Contagious podcast he's really a game changer in my book was keynote speaker at Digital Dealer. Very, very innovative, extremely passionate about the automotive space. Innovative, extremely passionate about the automotive space. I love his passion on many levels and kind of a kindred soul in the creative space.
Speaker 2:So, kyle, welcome and thank you for being on the podcast man. What's up, sir? I didn't know this was a live podcast.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we'll talk today about the post-mortem on the CRM. I know you guys just went through a CRM change so we wanted to talk about the good, the bad and the ugly kind of lessons learned, best practices, things that you guys went through in the process, how you went through the selection process of picking a new CRM versus an old one and kind of what can you guys of picking a new CRM versus an old one. You know, kind of what can you guys, what are your expectations to perform with kind of the retooling of the organization?
Speaker 2:So I kind of wanted to start out with kind of my first question was what was the thing that kind of propagated the change in the organization side and if you can talk about that a little bit, organization side, and if you can talk about that a little bit, yeah, I think you know our big desire, kind of starting, um, a little over a year ago, was we were just looking at what we were asking our people to do on a daily basis, specifically our sales staff, and we were going you know how many, how many places are we asking to log in and how many different things are we requiring of them from, like just a pure practice standpoint, to engage with customers, engage with their daily tasks, reports, all that type of stuff, and, um, we were looking to streamline that it at any at any place, right?
Speaker 2:Um, so we we just started looking at where, where can we streamline, create efficiencies at a very simple level, reduce logins and be able to kind of create a business structure that's enjoyable to live within from an employee perspective, because if we can do that then we can serve our customers better. So that's been a big desire across, like you know, variable and fixed ops for us is figuring out where those inefficiencies lie and where we can allow tech to meet those inefficiencies.
Speaker 1:So were you guys mainly looking for that one pane of glass experience that if you were, you know, a BDC member or somebody in sales staff, that you were logging into the CRM and basically working everything of your daily day-to-day job out of that one kind of platform? Or is that kind of the the the objective that you guys had?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, in a perfect world that would be the case, right, Um, and?
Speaker 2:And so the closer we can get to that, the more they just it's like it's one central source of truth for them, it's one place to go and we knew, we've known, going in and we know, you know, even into the future, like it's not going to be a practical reality to do that from a single place, but we can get enough under one roof and make it easy to use.
Speaker 2:You know, I say this all the time In the automotive industry we do this thing where it's like, hey, we're going to take this really, really awesome college graduate that we just moved into a sales environment and they just got out of college where they were expected to buy an Apple computer. When they got in, they did everything on their phone. They built business strategies and understand project management tools because the business degree that they got, or communications degree or anything like that. And then we sit down in front of a Dell computer that's eight years old at the dealership and say so, this is Reynolds. To get forward, you hit the arrow button and to get backward you hit S and then J goes to this back screen and they're like what just happened to me, right, and so we've got to find tech that meets the expectation of the people that we're attempting to attract and retain.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a really good point. And you know, you see, sometimes you know if you're in a lot of dealerships, you see an F&I manager that's been in the organization for 40 years that can fly through Reynolds so quickly that Reynolds can't keep up with them. You know right that they know the F3 keys and they're entered down, down, up down, you know sideways, and Reynolds can't even keep up with how fast they're going and they've memorized the keystrokes to get to be efficient. And you put a millennial or just a Gen Z not even a millennial, for that case, a Gen Z guy in front of that system and're gonna lose their minds. They've been dealing with an ipad for the, you know, half of their life. You know the, my kid, I've got a eight-year-old, a five-year-old and they know how to use an ipad before they could read.
Speaker 1:You know, it's just it's that's a really good point that it's almost impossible to. You know you're doing them a disservice to putting them in front of an antiquated tool of that capacity. So how did you guys integrate the new school with the old school and get buy-in across the team to say, hey, this is the new way of doing business? We still have some people that are used to the old way of doing business. How do you marry those two things and get buy-in on the team? How did that happen?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so luckily, we just have a practice of making them always change, which is not always the best thing. Um, no, so, you know, just from a group perspective, like we went through a crm change three years ago, we went through a massive process change two years ago um, you know, we're we hire people with the expectation that things may change and that that's probably for the better, and so it's kind of this, uh, this culture around being open to that type of stuff, um, especially from a technology perspective or a process perspective, um, and so we, we maybe were ahead of the curve on that, just because we've created that culture, especially in the last three to four years. And that's definitely thanks to, you know, mr Nelson, chad Brandon, the people that are the leaders in our company, that are really, you know, saying hey, look, we, if we're always going to be on the cutting edge of stuff, we have to be willing to be able to be flexible, and so there's a culture there going to be on the cutting edge of stuff, we have to be willing to be able to be flexible, and so there's a culture there, um, but then, uh, from like a really distinct level when, when the executive team uh, kind of uh knew that we were headed down this path of changing crm. We intentionally brought in um people across the spectrum in our variable staff, so our sales staff, so managers, bdc managers, even salespeople, prior to signing any contracts, to do demos and give us feedback, so that there was two things happening One, if there was anything we missed, because maybe we're not in it every single day, that they were able to raise our awareness for it.
Speaker 2:And then two, so that, if we were and we did end up moving forward, that they could also be, like, you know, kind of the champions of it, saying, hey, this is something that we've already seen, we believe in it, we're ready to go, come along with us, right, and that was a really cool thing to experience and something that we missed on a large technology we did two years ago. That, I think in the first few weeks, has really given us a lot of horsepower in this change management of change management and new technology implementation.
Speaker 1:Those are the two most critical ones, right? It's like bring the team in early to help you make the decision and then get buy-in and champions from those guys. Right, because the worst thing that can happen is that this top-down push something down everybody's throats. They don't necessarily understand why they're doing something, and then you're going to get pushback at every single level and they're going to almost vie for it to fail and at that change kind of the change resistance that they have. And culturally, that says a lot about your, your organization. I mean, was it always like that or is that something that you guys have learned through through pain? Or you know, just kind of, is everybody reading delivering happiness by tony shea? What's the? How did you guys get good at that? Because that's not something that happens naturally.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no. So from a technology perspective, that's really the first time that we've done that and that was just from learning in the past. Right, you know some, some technologies. It's maybe easier because they're kind of tertiary to to kind of go hey, we're inserting this, this is the process changes, what we're going to do. You know you get buy-in from a few people, but this is such a big wholesale change that we that we recognized as a leadership team that we needed to do that.
Speaker 2:Um, and so, because when we went through the last time we changed CRM, that didn't happen. And so, because when we went through the last time we changed CRM, that didn't happen. And the heartburn was so dramatic for those first couple months because nobody was bought in to the change, and so we just knew going into this that that was a necessary part of what we were going to do and honestly, like from an executive team level, it took us nine months to make this decision. So it wasn't like something where, you know, one month we were like, hey, we saw this new thing, let's try it. Great demo change. You know, um, we took a lot of time to research. We probably took, uh, you know, over six or seven hours worth of uh demos and asking questions and really dove into the product how the change was going to happen. You know what it was going to impact from a business continuity perspective. We asked all those questions and so we took our time, which was hard but also good at the same time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a lot of people kind of see the new shiny object and jump towards that.
Speaker 1:I mean I really applaud your guys' organization because of taking the time, the diligence to go through that monotonous process of seeing 17,000 demos, distilling that down to three products that you think that you can use, then going down to two and then going down to one and asking all the questions and going through the hard process of doing that.
Speaker 1:And I bet that your, I guess, propensity to change in the future will be a lot less because you're so committed to this working, to this new CRM working, and you're so bought into the process that you're going to find workarounds to to. It's like an almost like an evolutionary shift in the organization rather than it being, you know, kind of this new shiny object that's going to pull the organizations, like pushing the organization towards this change that's going to change the whole ecosystem of how how the organization works. I mean that's pretty innovative, like if I see a lot of dealers out there and they don't necessarily take those precautions to to to make this change and take it with this this level of seriousness, like how I mean it speaks a lot for your leadership and speaks a lot about. You know the organizational culture and like how how did that shift happen? I'm really interested in understanding from the ownership perspective and the executive team, when did the click happen that they started taking this really, really seriously, this change, management or implementation?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, that was probably eight, nine, maybe years ago when we made our first major shift in the way that we do business, specifically on the variable side. We're really looking at, you know, communicating from a place of why? Communicating from a place of our core values. So so we got really diligent with over communicating core values um, during onboarding, during meetings, and and um and and that being the communicative culture instead of and so like. Even employee reviews 75% of the employee review is is on employee characteristics, not performance. Oh right, so it's just, it's, it's all the way through the organization. Is that employee characteristics, not performance? Oh, wow, so it's just, it's all the way through the organization. Is that culture? Employee characteristics, core values are paramount to performance.
Speaker 2:And so when you have a culture like that from the leadership in our organization, it's a lot easier to say, okay, when we are going through change management that we've filtered through these core values we have. We've, you know, looked at, you know how it impacts our people, because that's what matters most how it impacts the way that they can or can't do their the task, the job, the position agreement that we've agreed with them, that they are held accountable to, and then is it good for the customer. And if we can kind of check all those boxes, then we have a really good story to tell to our employees in that change management by saying hey look, this is why we want to do this. It checks all these boxes for core values, all these boxes for, yes, it's good for the customer, yes, it's good for you, it aligns with our current processes.
Speaker 2:There might be some shifting that we have to do from process perspective, but it's an alignment. And so when we take, when we take that perspective, you know it's, it's, it's much, it's much deeper than just we're good at change management. It's like a business culture that had to, that had to be instilled from, you know, our executive team, um, and, and the ownership, uh, you know, years ago, to get us to this place Right and we're constantly learning. We're not we haven't perfected it Right, um, but that's that's what it takes. Um is is the leadership, the top and of the bottom of the organization, which, for us, is the bottom. We say that higher you go, the more people you serve.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And so if they take that approach to everything and it's like it's not, you know, we're going to jam this down your throat and use it because we say we say you have to, it's. We've taken you and our customers into consideration, along with our core values, and we believe this is the best way to do business and, if we can, and and and and. So our people believe in that process from day one and they learn that process from day one, and so when we then re-communicate a new thing with the why as the purpose, they receive it in that way and so hopefully, by and large, that's received well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's powerful. It's almost like everybody. The leadership executive team went to a Simon Sinek workshop and started that process Was there a particular book that had a huge impact on the culture of the organization.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so one of the books is the book Traction. So that was a big leadership book that our group went through. We read who Moved the Cheese and also the One Minute Manager were all corporate books that we read. I started back even before I was with the group. I found the Simon Sinek video back in 2011, about two years after that first TED Talk, and so when I came on board, you know, it was my intention to continue what I believed about that, and so we got that injected into the culture, you know. So all of those were transformational because we listened and read those as a group.
Speaker 1:No, that's pretty powerful. I mean, it's pretty impressive. The transformational ability that an idea can have in an organization and the power of kind of that top that leadership. You know the speed of the leaders, the speed of the team and that the ability of leadership to kind of embody those things and have that transformational process and have the vulnerability and openness to be able to make that change, that cultural change, speaks volumes of what the leadership style is. And can you talk a little bit about the leadership style at the top? What does it feel like from your position? What are the things that kind of resonate with you and those cultural shifts that you've seen?
Speaker 2:Well, here's one for you, and I think this will maybe sum it up right. And you know, not all of our executive team, like Mr Nelson, who's the active owner, is not out of Tennessee but out of Oklahoma. But when he comes out here, right, and I get to sit down with him or shake his hand or hug his neck, the first thing he asks is not hey, how's business? Or hey, how'd the marketing go last month? Or hey, how did the CRM change go? It's hey, how, how'd the marketing go last month? Or uh, hey, how did, how did the CRM change go? It's a hey, how's your family? Um, how are you? Uh, what's going on in your life? And, um, you know, when you get that at a core level, you know the rest is good, yeah, and that's across the board. So my bosses, the people that I directly work with every single day, that's the first thing.
Speaker 2:It's not. You know you don't get back from vacation and everybody goes hey, how about part-timer? It's hey, how was your vacation? Did you shoot a good golf round? Did you have what was your best meal? Right, and, and that's I mean that literally happened to me yesterday I came back for vacation and those were the first three questions that were asked of me, um and not. Not a question of like oh my goodness, things broke last week, or things were this, that and the other, or how did we miss this was it was that side. And so you know, working in an organization like that, you just know that when the question comes of how did the marketing come go last week, you're not going to get browbeat for it, you know, and so I I hate to boil it down to that, but when? When?
Speaker 1:that's the culture, that's the culture yeah, mean I think it speaks volumes in its simplicity, right? I mean the fact that you're more important than anything else in that moment, that the connection of how you are doing personally is more important than anything, because if you're doing well and you're connected and you're rested and you're back and you had a great time and you had a great time and you had spent time with your family, that's the most important thing. Everything else will fall into its place for work, because that makes almost everything else worth it. You have a space where you can connect there and then have a meaningful career, and that's what everybody really, really expects. And I think that in many cases, your passion for the automotive industry is almost a side effect of that connectivity and that meaningfulness focused right or that was focused on profit or whatever that looked like. There wouldn't even be a place for passion to grow at that level, and I think that that speaks volumes for the culture of the organization.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And yeah, I just, I get to be a part of that which is really cool, and we get to be a of that which is really cool and and we get to be, you know, it's cool. Even cooler, our customers get to be a part of that and they notice it when they walk in the showroom, right, they notice us smiling and enjoying being with each other and and and not, you know, scowling at someone for taking the next customer or things like that. It's an environment that's infectious, that infectious that goes much beyond just the internal culture. It impacts the external culture and then, like I said, that impacts our ability to walk our people through change, because they believe that we're for them and not against them, hopefully and we ask that question often, but by the way that they address those changes, it typically speaks to that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you part from like a place of positive intent, right? Is that if everybody knows at their core that they want best for the other person, then you can foster a place of collaboration rather than, you know, kind of resentment and pulling in different directions. And, dude, I'll tell you this, I got super fired up at Digital Dealer after you know, with your speech and kind of the passion that you brought to the place with you know, I remember a line that you said is like I want my daughters right, you have daughters, right. It's like I want my kids to be passionate about joining the automotive space and I was like man that hit super, super deep for me.
Speaker 1:It's like I love this business so much and I love the culture of this business so much. I want it to be kind of this awesome collaborative place and I want it to be a place that people want to come to work for. I want it to be a place that people want to come to work for because I think that, you know, enabling people to buy a vehicle is one of the second largest purchases that they can make in their life and they can functionally change the way that they live their lives through that process. So I mean going back to it. Is that a place that creates a culture where somebody like you can grow and flourish is a place that I want to be involved with. You know what I mean and I want to replicate across as many places as possible.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, and we just gotta like, we just gotta keep leaving that stamp in all the places that we connect with. This is, I mean, you know we're on a clubhouse app right now and and you know this podcast will go out, but you know out. But whether it touches 10 or 15 or 50 or 500 people in the automotive industry, it's important for us to keep saying these things and that's important to our organization to help lead that charge, and there's other incredible automotive organizations out there that are leading and helping lead that charge. But we want to be a big part of that and that's, like I said, a large part due to stuff that was set up well before I got here and by the leadership and the ownership group that we get to work for.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, that's, that's you, and you know that speaks volumes in in kind of everything that that we're doing and how much this pandemic of positivity, the, the, the pop, you know that we're all involved with and how pitched, how cool pitch tank is and how constructive it is, and kind of this clubhouse family that we've created, I think it, it permeates into, into everything that we do. I think it's, it's, I think it's really powerful and I'm I'm really happy that to be a part of this. And obviously you're the guy that started the automotive innovations room, so you know, and that that I'm part of and I'm I'm really appreciative of that. So you know, with that said, we're going to move a little bit into Q&A and start doing kind of popcorn. Whoever would like to jump up, just raise your hand and we can start a discussion of the good, the bad and the ugly on CRM implementations.
Speaker 1:Good best practices. It sounds like from Kyle's kind of description that he hit. You know, I took a class in school that was business systems implementations. You know, I took a class in school that was business systems implementations and it literally talks about getting buy-in from your team early, bringing them into the decision-making process, supporting them, showing them the why. You know, it seems like you guys just kind of naturally hit all the main targets for a successful implementation and there's a science behind this.
Speaker 2:So I'd like to see if we've got some questions and yeah, and I mean, here's the thing like it doesn't matter if you're going to change a major system like that, there's going to be issues like we're still I mean, we're, I think, two weeks, two and a half weeks in you know we're still. We're still checking on data and double checking that it's all in and cleaning up, merging and, um, you know, uh, trying to figure out where how our reporting is looking and we did a mid-month shift, which which means that our data is going to be a little wonky this month and we just have to accept that and know that we're going to still sell cars and hopefully sell more than we ever have. Um, actually, we're on pace to break records, which is cool, and a lot of people in automotive industry, uh, are that way right now. But, yeah, we know that we'll be able to reconcile and we're working together as a team.
Speaker 2:I was with one of our BD leads this morning for about three hours and just working through, you know, those little issues and those little idiosyncrasies that you know we got used to in one system that we've got to figure out and challenge ourselves in ways to work with and work with this new company to to kind of find those issues and refine that. So, yeah, I mean it hasn't come without its its fair share of heartache, but it was honestly one of the most smooth transitions that we've, that we've been able to to have in major systems thus far, so it's really neat.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's. It's pretty cool that you guys did this mid month, you know, like in the middle of a of a big month that you're going to have, and you guys still hit your records. I mean that's. That speaks volumes, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's, that's all the team just staying in, Like that's, that's. I just get to be a part of watching them. You know do incredible work in the midst of change, so I'll just I'm giving them all the praise for that, for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that we were talking about. We were talking about modern day car sales. The morning meeting is like how much construction benefits sales numbers when you're having a construction project? It's like there's this weird phenomenon when you put a goal or a challenge in front of everybody, everybody naturally goes to aim to that thing and says, oh no, you know, we've got a construction coming up so we don't know what the schedule is going to look like and parking is going to be an issue. And then it kind of pulls everybody together and tightens up the ship and there's this really cool phenomenon of that happening and I wish that every day was kind of that phenomenon of things tightening up and aiming towards a goal and everybody rowing in the same direction and not kind of marred by the day-to-day bs, that. That that pulls us in in different directions. That are just kind of distractions. So, um, yeah, that's that. It's really interesting that that phenomenon happens at at with a crm implementation as well happens with a CRM implementation as well.
Speaker 1:Absolutely yeah, so let's get some guys on the stage. Guys have any questions for Kyle about you know kind of the good, the bad and the ugly on Q&A for CRM implementations.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I got a question for you. Kyle Gray mentioned this morning in Modern Day Car Sales about partnering with vendors that are innovative and bringing new things. How much of the process when you guys were evaluating CRM was it innovation from what they were bringing to the table that could improve your process and, opposed to the percentage of the decision that was, we're looking for a tool that will fit our process yes, for it was probably more lean.
Speaker 2:And this is kind of my theory on the majority of tech is that we start with process and add tech to it. Right, because we've got to start with the customer, build a process around how they need to be served and then ensure that tech supports that. So that was probably a larger percentage of it. You know, there's definitely a desire in our group to be on the leading edge of not just process but also technology, so we're always looking for that Like that's. One of my primary roles is to just always be looking out for what's new technology that could potentially support something new or that we could adjust our processes for.
Speaker 2:But in this particular instance, um, it was a lot around, um, this heartache of like, okay, we're doing all these things.
Speaker 2:We believe it should be all in one system and it should be easy to use and and and good for the, for the dealership user, and so let's see if we can find that. And so that was probably the larger I would probably say 60 to 70% of the decision-making process was in trying to align technology with the current processes that we had in-house and reduce logins and increase efficiency. There wasn't we didn't have to in this transition we didn't have to actually change process really outside of just changing where the process happened. So that was our unique situation in this and probably my like. If I was going to say anything that we do is if the technology requires us to change a process, then we probably need to backtrack first and figure out if it's actually the right process and then, if we've been presented with a technology that requires us to do that, we probably need to look at multiple to make sure that we are not just changing process for a technology, if that makes sense.
Speaker 3:So was there anything in the technology that they presented that you guys looked at and said, man, we need to add that to our process, that that is like mind blowing.
Speaker 2:Honestly, not, not really, I think. So one thing that we hadn't thought of prior was we also changed phone systems at the same time, and the phone system that was actually recommended by the CRM company allowed us to have individual agent texting and call lines. So the majority of phone call providers that have integrations with CRMs can get you down to individual agent lines. Now, over the last 12 months, they've all kind of moved that way and we didn't realize that you could get to the point of individual agent and text lines that were dealership owned, and so, instead of it just looking like a single text thread with multiple people engaged, it could be multiple people engaging with the customer in the same platform from an individual agent line perspective, and we felt like that's a really good customer experience. So that was exciting for us as we made the leap as well.
Speaker 1:All right, thomas, you had something for us.
Speaker 5:I did as someone who has done a couple of implementations and installs myself. I'm watching your journey, kyle, fairly closely and want to see how this goes over the next three months. How this goes over the next three months, mainly because I am stepping out of the dealership and going out on my own and I've been asked by a couple of dealer groups to consult specifically on CRM and different companies. I did speak to Steve Rosser the other day at length and you know I haven't been through a complete product demo with his system yet, but I will at some point. But I'm really like to see, especially with your analytical mind, how this goes over the next 90 days.
Speaker 2:Well, here's what I'll tell you a 10 day over 10 day on activity, plus plus 40% emails activity. And so when you say I should- use that.
Speaker 5:So when you say activity, there's your activities before more end users sorry, I said that again. Something perfect these are activities performed by end users.
Speaker 2:Yep. So activities performed by dealership users have increased that much. Really about flat, if you take into consideration the two stores. About flat on leads phone calls like inbound leads, leads phone calls like inbound leads so to see that much more activity happening across the systems. Also, about a 20% increase in video sent. So we were doing all of those things in multiple platforms prior, whether it be CRM or video platform or texting platform, and so now all in one and we're seeing a massive uptick in activity. And I don't have the exact appointment data yet because that's one place where I'm struggling with reporting right now, but I'm based on a volume of people. I do know volume of people in the door has increased. I just don't know. I've only been back from vacation one day, so give me a break. I don't know what the appointment data on that is yet, but I do know that.
Speaker 5:No breaks for you, no breaks for you, no soup for you. Well, you were on Ben's sessions prior, correct? Okay, I can tell you just from you know, with the dealer group I was just currently with that, just bringing, hey, you can do this, the this being the text messaging and video with an app and showing them how easy it is to do. I mean that alone jumped up 50%, 60% Text messaging for one. And then secondly was video. Know, video usage, but yeah, I'm just curious to kind of watch your journey can I jump in for a second?
Speaker 3:I just have a question. I came here late. What is the new technology and company that Kyle switched to?
Speaker 2:technology and a company that Kyle switched to. So we went from VIN Solutions to DriveCentric CRM.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I guess the big question is, like you know, for me there's this math equation that happens when we do CRMs.
Speaker 1:It's like if you're on a CRM that's kind of middle of the pack and you're not using it properly and you don't have the necessary processes in place to make sure that it's as effective as possible, changing CRMs is going to do nothing. It's going to be the same exact place and that's where the weapons don't make the warrior kind of mentality comes from. But if you you're very effective and have the processes in place and Kyle kind of hinted at this one when he said, you know, it wasn't really the process that changed is where they were doing it that changed there's an increase and an increase in horsepower. That happens just through tuning and getting a new tool. So I I think that in some of these cases, just moving to a CRM isn't the answer. It's building the scaffolding and Kyle correct me if I'm wrong here but building the scaffolding and processes and people and the culture, and then adding an effective CRM on top of that, it seems like it's a winning formula for high levels of effectiveness.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's it. I think you nailed it. If the technology is the solution, then we've got a problem.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 5:Folks, it's like I had a conversation the other day and I said well, what's your process? Do you have it in writing and who's holding them account? Who's holding who accountable for the process? Not the weapon, but the warrior.
Speaker 1:Not the weapon, but the warrior. Yeah, exactly, thomas, you know how it is.
Speaker 5:Love that thing, john Love it brother.
Speaker 1:So, kyle, if you had to do it, I'll ask you a question here. If you had to do it all over again, what were some blind spots that, even with all the preparation in the world that you guys wish you would have known, asked that you have fresh in your minds that I would have tweaked this thing and do this a little bit different or better, or do you think that you hit everything kind of with an appropriate level of force and knocked everything out?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I think one thing that I would have done differently is the way we cleaned the data prior to the exit and inspected the data. It was, it was, it was actually in, and this wasn't as much on us, although I think I could have done a little bit more Um, but uh, you know it, it was um, the, the way that just trying to understand the way the data was coming from the old system to the fields and certain data and and and ensure that it comes in, well, um, you know that it just felt like I, I, it felt like I could have got a better grasp on that, potentially Um, and and maybe uh, done that uh a little bit better. Also, you know, with this I would have the oneCentric was that the way that DriveCentric does task management is much more driven by not lead type but stage type and then not task type but touch point, and I wish I would have had, and we could have made this happen.
Speaker 2:I wish we would have had, and gotten our hands on, more of thinking through those business rules, because we've had to shift them a lot over the last two weeks to align them more with the way we want to communicate with customers and I think if we would have really thought through how that would work, we would have been better equipped those first five um, you know, five to seven days.
Speaker 2:Uh, we lost some ground and and just you know we we were missing some modes of communication because we were leaning a little bit too much on certain types of communication at different stages within their deal flow. So sort of mapping and that sort of change in understanding of how to connect with customers is maybe something that some of us in the room you know that either have watched or listened to people move to drive-centric or maybe drive-centric needs to just work through. Maybe I'll talk to Steve about that is just doing a better job at educating on how that might impact the way you've done business roles in the past and how how you're doing business roles now, cause it's a definite change of mentality from the four other CRMs that I've ever worked in.
Speaker 1:And is that like a shift in almost the arc of the customer life cycle? It's like one approaches it from a stage perspective rather than approaching it from a lead type perspective. Is that? Do I understand that correctly?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's like a shopper journey perspective than an acquisition perspective, right, and so it's just different touch points along the way in that.
Speaker 2:And then also, um, you know they have, uh, you know, a lot of other CRMs are just called this a task, but they have the ability to create a touch point, um, which can be completed by any of four.
Speaker 2:Uh, well, you can set it up to be any of four, or two out of the four, three out of the four, depending on the type of touch point that you want to have them complete.
Speaker 2:Well, you can set it up to be any of four or two out of the four, three out of the four, depending on the type of touch point that you want to have them complete. So it's not just like a call task here and an email task here. It's like you need to complete a touch point, which is great from a perspective of if your people are paying attention to how that customer is communicating best. But if you still want, if your business mentality is still hey, we still need to get a phone call out on day one and not just text, you've got to create either multiple tasks or multiple touch points to encourage that with good notes, and so that was just a learning curve that we had to make from a management perspective was oh gosh, we've created all these touch points, but we want to make sure these tasks also happen alongside of that at different points during the customer journey.
Speaker 1:And is there? I haven't been in a CRM in a little while, but are there almost like effective rates, like touch points or points of contact versus responses to the customers? Like how do those are those equations that are in the CRM? Or is that you know, like how effective are your touch points per responses and kind of your engagement rate, rather than it being, you know, blasting them with information and hoping that they call back at some point?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's the major thing that DriveCentric is trying to solve. They're trying to present you with hey, this worked well, this didn't work well. You know, they essentially like if you send, you know they can show you. You sent three emails and they turn it red like they never responded to that. Um you spent. Sent two texts. They responded to one that's a yellow. Um. You called four times. They picked up every single one that's a green right. So, okay, so live and call, and I'm just giving examples, but they're able to, they're able to show that just based on, like you know, terms of engagement from a customer perspective.
Speaker 1:It's almost like what is effective versus what's not. It's almost like a lean methodology to approach every single customer. It's like you create a hypothesis, you deploy it, get feedback and then change based on that, and you do that with every single customer. It seems like a smart way to do it right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. The question is do you have people that are diligent enough to try all four ways really? And so that's where we missed. We had to still make them try all the ways. Right was the initial miss that we had.
Speaker 3:Kyle, the stuff that you were missing in a CRM that you did not have. Did you go to Vin Solutions and say, hey guys, we would like to see this and if you don't have this, so you can't provide it. We're going to shop around and look for something else.
Speaker 2:So, to be fair, Vin has a texting solution. They obviously have calling and emailing. I clicked the calling and emailing and they have look for something else. So, to be fair, Vin has a texting solution. They obviously have calling and emailing like click to calling and emailing, and they have a video solution For us. They just weren't up to par with what we had that we were using outside of it. It wouldn't have given us the customer or user experience that we were after.
Speaker 5:So we looked at both of those, yeah hey, cal, when, when they did your your data extract, I'm sure they took DMS data as well as CRM data and you know typically you have it cleaned and matched against various databases. But then you said something about they didn't match up fields. Elaborate on that a little bit if you would.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so just because, and more particularly from the CRM, not from the DMS, it's a lot more simple from a data perspective.
Speaker 2:Honestly, it was CRM fields that were, you know, because you know the intentionality and drive is much more in these stages. It was some of that didn't match up and so we had a lot bucketed in weird places, um, and so the the initial task load was in the wrong type of task load, um, and then uh, also um, uh, things like uh, some of the ways that, like service data came over, um, was kind of interesting. Uh, that was from DMS, that I would. I would have never been able to do anything about that, um.
Speaker 2:So you know, we have, if anyone's ever going to do it, we have dealer track, dms and essentially a bunch of service RO data, um, with open ROs and uh, open um, uh appointments, uh came in looking like they were new leads because they were essentially new customers and I I honestly I don't know whether that came over because Vint Solutions houses CRM data in that way, and so I don't know if that kind of like condensed from the CRM or from the DMS. I don't know where that data field came from. I'm guessing from the CRM. But that was a problem where we had to kind of like mass clear that stuff once it was in DriveCentric.
Speaker 5:Well, we can probably take the soft line. I can maybe walk you through a few things as far as data and where it comes from and that kind of thing. I don't want to take up too much time on that here.
Speaker 1:But, brother, whatever I can do to help, let me know, um, I I do have a question on the data side, kyle, just to elaborate a little bit on that. How did you guys prep for cleaning the data and making sure that that data was mapped to the right fields? On the exporting side, did you have a team that was separating the 30,000 clients or 100,000 clients that you guys had over the life of, you know, the auto group? How did you guys attack that and how did you guys approach it? And how did you prep for the import into a new CRM?
Speaker 2:So we don't have our own data layer, which is something that I've been looking at for a while, um, which I would love to have, but, um, honestly, the the, the majority of the cleanup that we did was just in clearing out, um, like old tasks, um deals that should be marked kind of dead so that they didn't restart tasks um within the new system looking like they were open. Um, you know, ensuring that DMS matching was correct to any sold deals, um that that were in there, so that we knew that the customer data files, when they came through, would be matched as well. Um, and I think that's the majority of the stuff that we did and, like I said, we didn't like from from like just a customer match perspective, we didn't have a whole bunch of, you know, duplicates where the DMS data and the CRM data wasn't matching up or things like that. I mean literally month to date, um, our sold records are literally one-to-one, um, so that's, I mean you can't ask much more than that.
Speaker 5:Typically your ultimate database is your DMS and you have a connection typically, if not real-time, with your DMS. Depending on the DMS and the level of integration, you'll have real-time data, especially if and when and what you're using out in a service drive and typically it goes through a data clearinghouse where they verify you know that this person lives at this address and this is an actual good email phone number, things like that. It goes to a match database, whether it's CRM data or DMS data.
Speaker 1:Typically DMS data is clean, because they do that usually once a quarter. Kyle, I had a final question, since we're wrapping up here. We're getting at the top of the hour. I had one more question on the dealer side Did you guys have a lead, a project manager or somebody that was kind of in charge of this whole transition soup to nuts?
Speaker 2:So that was me, yep.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was kind of a loaded question because I know that a lot of the success of how the implementation was is is probably due to the fact that you were leading it and that they had somebody that was designated to it to do it.
Speaker 1:Soup to nuts and I can't stress how important that is to have one person that is kind of the champion of this thing and that can sherpa you know, the organization through this process and not everybody has that and I, you know, encourage as kind of a best practice of any implementation or new effort that the organization has that they designate one person to be the Sherpa of it and lead it through, see it all the way through pre-implementation, implementation, post-implementation that has a connection with a vendor directly and that can be that one throat to choke that has the power and authority to do things, to make the calls.
Speaker 1:I think that's critical. A lot of the times these projects are almost doomed from Jump Street because it doesn't have that empowerment in it and it looks shows to the not full commitment of the organization to change and embracing and driving change kind of was sparked in in my belly as a fire after I drew. I read um delivering happiness by by by tony shea, and that's a core value that zappos had and it blew my mind to see that an organization would be so forward-thinking to take that and I'm glad to see that transitioning into the automotive space and you guys doing such a good job of taking this huge opportunity of a CRM change and increasing the effective rate of the organization. I applaud you guys for that CRM change and increasing the effective rate of the organization.
Speaker 4:I applaud you guys for that.
Speaker 3:Hey guys.
Speaker 6:I have a quick question for Kyle. My name is Ryan, I'm from Toronto, canada. Do you guys have your salespeople meet customers when they're in for their appointment? You know to do a touch appraisal to build a quote, maybe in a new car. You know have that point of contact with their already existing customer or with another, you know, say a service drive champion, to greet that customer and just see if there's anything they can do to help.
Speaker 6:Sorry ask that a little bit differently, sorry. So what I'm asking is does your sales team meet customers when they're in for their service drive appointment, when they're getting their car maintenance? You know, are you guys offering a complimentary touch appraisal? Are you guys offering to build a quote on a new car, trying to keep them in your database? You know, make them feel important. You know one thing I learned from one of my mentors. He said a customer will always forget what you say, but they'll never forget how you made them feel.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's attributed to Maya Angelou, I think, yeah, but yeah, that is something we do, we actually utilize. We start that touchpoint with our purchasing team, so the people that are a team that's dedicated to purchasing customer vehicles, which makes it much more of a soft touch, for sure.
Speaker 1:Okay, all right, I think we have time for one more question for Mr Kyle on CRM post-mortem implementations, the good, the bad and the ugly, and we'll be wrapping it up here in a couple minutes. Ian, you had something, yeah.
Speaker 4:Hey guys, kyle, I know with CRM I understand that garbage in and garbage out. What did you guys do? Or how did you set up the teams or teams or quality information going in, like, did you use a template and precisely tell them sort of a frame of what you wanted? Because if you leave it open-ended, they just put whatever they want into it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so Sorry, go ahead. Yeah, I think I get your question. So you know there's really only three ways that well, I guess four ways that someone gets into. You know that a customer gets into the CRM. So first is through an internet inquiry, and so we're able to track that. Second is through a phone call, and we're able to track that with the phone system provider integration, because that's all pushed in the system so we can inspect that. The third way is through our showroom system. So we actually employ greeters, what we call a showroom coordinator.
Speaker 2:That's much more mobile, that's ensuring that every single person is getting entered into our showroom system, which is for those that don't know we're a single point of contact store, so the customer has to be in there for them to do anything essentially. So that has an API connection with the CRM, so it goes in there. And then the final way would be anyone that they get from, like a personal referral or anything like that. So that's on them. If they're communicating with a customer, then then they put it in there. But we have a culture that that emphasizes that. So those are the four ways that it goes in. And then we have a team leads that are dedicated to particular parts of our team that are always inspecting their CRM work notes all that type of stuff. Does that answer your question?
Speaker 4:Kind of. I mean it's more directed to like for that concierge person. You're talking about the front. Like you guys have specific points that they need to ask to get direct and very specific information, because you can talk about anything and everything and she might or he might put all of that in which is not necessary, right? That's all I'm getting at. So I'm just wondering if there was kind of a specific questions or certain guidelines that you guys used to derive to that information.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so when entering a customer, we say what's your name, and then we say what's the best email to send you extremely important information about your potential vehicle purchase.
Speaker 2:And then we say on the phone number and what's the best way to reach you in the day in case something important comes up. And then we ask may I text that number? And so you're going to get that out of it. But it starts before that, because as long as you have a really, really strong, you know initial interaction and the customer, you have to build trust and then you get the right information and all of a sudden, the information in is correct, right, and if you do it in in digital form instead of like writing it on a notepad, right, which which is normally, you know, when I was selling cars, I had this like little like notepad that I kept in my pocket, that I would pull out and I'd write everything on, and I think I got a lot of wrong numbers because people were like, well, where's that piece of paper going to go? Right, so everything's digital for us.
Speaker 4:Cool, thank you.
Speaker 1:All right guys. Cool. Thank you, alright guys. So thank you everybody for joining us for dealer tech Tuesdays. Kyle, if you can let everybody know how to get in contact with you if they have any questions. I know contagious, the contagious auto is very powerful podcast, so if you can give everybody, let everybody know how to get in contact with you, I think that would be a great way to wrap it up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think just a direct message on LinkedIn is probably the easiest way, or Kyle at ContagiousAutocom Everything else. You have to spell my last name, which comes hard for a lot of people. But yeah, other than that, definitely please connect. If you have questions, I'd be glad to help out or answer any of them that I can.
Speaker 5:All right, last names. You can't even compete on the last name thing.
Speaker 1:Fair, quite fair, tom. We've got some tongue twisters out there. All right, guys, we're going to wrap it up. Thank you very much, everybody, for coming on. We'll see everybody next Tuesday, same time, same channel.