1 Ounce of Technology, 1 Pound of Process with Shawn Kniffin | 2024 NADA Show

Kyle Mountsier: 0:06

This is the artist formerly known as NIF, he's now known as the

‍Shawn Kniffin: 0:11

v net. No. Now on Zoom, I am I am just Neff. Honestly, just never just never.

Kyle Mountsier: 0:18

I love it. Shots better in your technical title at the German auto group director

Shawn Kniffin: 0:24

of marketing and technology. Hey,

Paul J Daly: 0:27

bringing those together make so

Kyle Mountsier: 0:31

interview is done. That is it. That is what you got. Right? Yeah. And it's not it. It's not you, which is a totally so you're not

Shawn Kniffin: 0:39

the guy we call when we can't know if there's something broken in it. We have IT companies fix that, right? Yeah, I can just talk about technology.

Kyle Mountsier: 0:47

But like, what's the technology that we're going to use that that takes marketing, and moves it all the way into the show? Yeah. What are you looking at right now? If you're over marketing and technology? What are you diving into right now?

Shawn Kniffin: 0:59

Well, obviously, is data. Is that a technology? It takes technology to manage all that data? Right? It's hard. I mean, you got it for sure. You gotta look around, and it's expensive, be really hard. You know, how does AI impact that? But how to how do we use technology to improve the customer experience? That's a big thing. But you know, when we started on this track with alto was started as an idea. And I would drive from our game stores to our homeless stores for an hour and a half. And I talked to Eric the whole time, I'm like, here's what I want to do, right? Because at the time, we weren't doing anything. And we had to get control of that data, which requires technology. And then we had to figure out what to do with it and clean it up and keep it clean, and make it better. And then enhance the data with other data sources, right? Yep. So we're looking at a lot of things. I mean, what goes into our phone technology? What goes into our websites? Do we have too much too little? So, you know, Bill Gates wrote a book back in 1998, called Business at the Speed of thought. And he said back then he said, the internet is going to change everything it touches, and it's going to touch everything. How true is that today? Wow.

Kyle Mountsier: 2:09

It's really nuts. Like, you know, the fact that even that we as an industry haven't just come to terms with the internet touches, everything, every customer, every interaction, every it doesn't matter if it's the showroom, or online, or a marketing channel, every single interaction, the internet the day that the connectivity that technology is like your role in bringing all of this together for customer touch points and customer journeys, is a role in every dealership right now. That is on blast. It is like high fire I call

Shawn Kniffin: 2:46

it always on. Yeah. Right? Because you're you're trying to evaluate what technology makes sense. What technology is going to take you backwards, what technology is going to bring you forward. Now we have a we have a saying that says for every pound of technology, we put in the dealership, we need 10 pounds of process. And if you don't have process behind technology, you got a silver bullet, you know, it's not gonna work. Yeah. But we've had to, we've had to instill that, like, Look, don't put doing it doing a DMS change right now and a couple of our stores crazy hard. Why? Because the technology does. So look at the technology, it's going into our vehicles.

Paul J Daly: 3:22

It's insane. To get over what you just said, a pound of technology. I'm thinking of like an ounce of prevention, a pound of cure. And so it's like an ounce of technology versus like needs requires a pound of process. And I just My mind's going on to the how opposite. Most people approach it. Yeah, technology is the solution. And I plug and play it. And there's little to no process. And then it doesn't work in 30 days, because there is no process. There's no process and I think you just skated right by the one of the biggest problems in the industry. Yeah. Why? Why? Where did the synthesis of like making or how do you hold that accountable? How do you hold process and technology accountable to one another, making sure that process is driving the ship, and technology is supporting the process. So

Shawn Kniffin: 4:05

a lot of our stores, all of our stores are autonomous, like we have no centralized and we have 20 stores across five states, Arizona, Montana, Michigan, Ohio, Florida. What you have to understand too, is like, look at like how the DMS world has changed. We're installing Tachyon and things. It's just recently we realized, like we need to have a corporate techie on champion, which is me, right? I'm gonna have to figure out how they make Tachyon work during the next installation and the next installation, right? That's pure technology. Right? How do we use that data? How do we use it responsibly? How do we get that data and fuse in there quickly? How do we get it over from the old DMS systems? And then you build process around that? Because otherwise you just got to technology without really doing anything with it. Right? Right. Because and how many systems

Kyle Mountsier: 4:55

today do dealers have that they bought at NADA? Nobody logs into

Shawn Kniffin: 4:59

how many dashboards do we have? Oh my god, add another darn dashboard. Right? This industry has got so many dashboards.

Kyle Mountsier: 5:10

We were hanging out with someone else's just second CDP was the solution confused data? Solution? No? Darn.

Shawn Kniffin: 5:24

Yeah, yeah. Who's got time to look at all those different things, right. But we have so much data. We don't have to use it. Yeah. And every data has a trigger point, too, right? That's one thing I'm working with. So on, it's like, I'm working with Claire boy on this, too, is like, Okay, I've got this data point. But tell me what triggered that data point? How does a customer go with 90 days and 250 websites and buys a used Mazda from a Toyota store? What What was that trigger?

Kyle Mountsier: 5:51

What was that journey look like to get back? If I understood

Shawn Kniffin: 5:55

that, then I would be able to adjust my marketing strategies accordingly. Right. Yeah. Because like, why would why would someone look at? Oh, it's because maybe it was a price point. Maybe it was they were looking for that vehicle? Was it a repeat customer? So the data is really what's is what's driving the industry right now. Right? There's been plenty of research papers written on CDP's. You know, we had this idea because we, we looked outside the industry, it says, who's doing this? Nobody was really doing it. And now everybody's sort of, you know, latching onto that thing, right? Yeah. But if you have to ask me with technology wise, it's like, how can we better manage our data? And how can we better execute on that data? And the platforms that are out there that can do that? Delivered effective communication strategy? That's what we looked at. We were looking at this as a communication strategy, not necessarily a marketing strategy, because customers just wanted to be talked to how do we talk to someone trying to sell a battery, or a new car, or 399? And what we know, right? And we will do a very good job of right, as an industry in general, and I'm super generalizing, I get it. Yeah. You know, that's, that's the journey we've been on. And we've learned a lot. We've learned we got a lot more to go

Kyle Mountsier: 7:07

over well overwhelmed by the theme of just everyone that we've been talking to here at the show is like this theme of real communication, not this contrived, send an email blast. Here's your Happy Birthday, like

Shawn Kniffin: 7:26

relationship ever get an automated birthday message from some CRM system?

Kyle Mountsier: 7:29

You know, every time Yeah.

Shawn Kniffin: 7:31

Delete? Yeah. Nothing right. Did you sent your wife that card whenever Boomer? Yeah, personalization is a big part of that.

Kyle Mountsier: 7:46

So cool, Shawn, it's been fun always talking to you, Laura, we got a brand new acronym. Done, if not, just that, just can't wait to see what you do with some of the new stuff that you're installing what you're working on without sale. And always following when anyone's talking about marketing and technology in the same sentence. Yeah,

Shawn Kniffin: 8:08

well, I appreciate that. Yes. It's not an easy job for any of us, right? Yeah, no, that's alright. So pleasure. Yeah. All right, man. Thanks.

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