Digital Dealer - January 2019 - 16

C O V E R S TORY: Continued from pg. 15

names are or who does something
extra special for them. I think those
customers will come back to you.
From a value perspective, I think
they might even be willing to pay
a little more money. They won't
certainly overpay for it. But when you
make it more about the relationship
than the transaction, I think you're
going to find yourself financially better
off.
DEALER MAGAZINE: How do you
ensure your employees are up-to-date
on products and processes?
DAN: First and foremost, Lexus
Corporate deserves kudos because
they do a great job of training our
associates on a constant basis.
Training is not a one-time deal. For
example, right now we have trainers
from Lexus in our conference room
training associates from sales, service,
and parts on Service Connect, which is
a product in our vehicles.
We also have training where we
have to travel, which we're always
doing, with our technicians going to
technical school, our salespeople going
to sales classes, etc. That's the first
level.
Then on the internal level,
sales training, once again, is not
something that happens one time.
The opportunity for training not
only happens in a classroom setting,
every week for the salespeople, but,
as Mike Dever likes to say, every
time a sales associate interacts with a
manager it's a training opportunity.
My sales managers and my finance
managers work with sales associates
on a daily basis, where they're talking
to the customers and determining
what each customer is looking for.
My service managers not only have
weekly shop meetings, but when the
one-on-one meetings between the
service advisor and the manager take
place, they go over different metrics.
We're looking for the outliers. We set
up performance standards and know
what they're capable of doing.
16

JANUARY 2019

It's a lot of discipline, and I see it as
another one of my responsibilities, to
ensure that we follow through on that.
If you hire somebody and go through
an onboarding program and after
that, you send them out on their own,
you're doing yourself a disservice.
Training is a constant thing you have
to be doing.
DEALER MAGAZINE: Could
you discuss your use of dealerships
tools, such as CRM, DMS, inventory
management?
DAN: Sure. Our DMS is DealerBuilt.
We have found them to be a
tremendous partner because they are
willing to work with us to develop
reporting we need from a financial
standpoint. Along with that, we use
NCM's axcessa tool, which takes
the data out of the DMS and puts it
into customized reports. NCM's 20
Group helps us establish internal
benchmarks and then measure toward
those, and that's a big help.
For a CRM, we use VIN Solutions.
We're looking at CRM through not
only the eyes of the salesperson but
also the customer. If it's something
that just benefits the dealership and
not the customer, I think those types
of providers are going to go out of
business. The vendors we partner
with have to be focused on what
we're doing at a dealership level; this
focus also has to make sense to the
consumer.
For our trade-in appraisals, we
use Kelley Blue Book℠ Instant Cash
Offer. Ask your customers, and you'll
find nine out of ten of them before
they came into your showroom put
their car into KBB to see how much it's
worth. We like to work with the same
vendor the customer is working with,
so we can come to an agreement on a
price for their current car faster.
On the inventory side, to price our
new cars we use vAuto's Conquest
tool, which we use for our used car
pricing as well. It gives my managers
the data they need, in a quick and

D I G I TA L D E A L E R . C O M

easy-to-understand format that we
can then translate for the customer.
We can show them in the marketplace
a price for the car they're interested
in buying; we're not just pulling a
number out of thin air. I think that
transparency helps build a level of
trust, so people want to do business
with you. I don't have to worry about
saying a customer's car is worth tenthousand dollars because my used
car manager said so. No. We put it
into KBB and appraise it and come
to an agreement and everybody's
happy. When it comes time for them
to do business with you again, they'll
remember they had a pretty good
experience the last time.
DEALER MAGAZINE: What is your
marketing strategy?
DAN: We do a ton of digital because
it's so measurable and cost-effective
and it's changing every day. Lexus
does a great job on a tier 1 level to
nationally advertise the brand.
When we get down to the store
level and people who are willing to do
business, we have to find where they
are, try to engage with them, and pull
them into the eco-system we have
here.
On our website, we have marketbased pricing for new cars, not just
for used cars. We've been posting
used car pricing for a long time, but it
wasn't until fairly recently, we began
to display new car pricing, when we
started using vAuto's Conquest tool.
We're not a one-price store but
I want shoppers to see this is what
Performance Lexus is doing: here's the
MSRP for the car, here's what we're
selling it for, here are all the rebates,
we're going to appraise your car
using Kelly Blue Book and so on. We
can make this process better for the
consumer, and I think that plays into
our long-term strategy.
My strategy is not to sell somebody
one car but to sell that person 20 cars
over the course of many years. I don't
want you to come in for service one
http://www.DIGITALDEALER.COM
Digital Dealer - January 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Digital Dealer - January 2019
