Anthony Barone

Paul Daly: 0:00If you're listening to his soda concessions by effective live from a soda con 2023

‍Michael Cirillo: 0:11

Hey, welcome to this episode of a sodium concessions for effective. I'm here with Anthony Barone. He's the strategic develop though, the Strategic Development Manager Development Manager, I wrote dev manager, I was like, oh, Strategic Development Manager at automotive mastermind. Thanks so much for joining me here on the sessions. Great to meet you, man. Hey, so just before we hit record, this is where I want to start. Yep. Before we hit record, you said there's a difference between demand versus traffic. And I want to dig in. And because I think you know, a lot of the narrative in the industry right now there's there's strikes, there's supply chain issues still happening, maybe some impending implications of more supply chain issues? What's used cars going to do? What are new cars? There's so many things happening. And you say something to this bearded bald dude, that there's a difference between demand and traffic. Talk to me about that. How can we take that narrative that there's a difference and map it to hopefully a positive spin on? Hey, there's there's opportunity in this industry? What's your take?

Anthony Barone: 1:13

I mean, the closest tie to the difference between demand traffic, yeah, is probably a little bit of a buzzword. Sure, but pent up demand. Right? It says word and automotive Jarier. Right. pent up demand. So I think we've been hearing that for a very long time. My take would be that we haven't access the potential of that pent up demand, especially as market conditions get the perception those conditions get worse from the customer perspective, customers saying, Hi payment, high interest rate, they're not seeing more reasons to come into the market. They're seeing less less, right. So for the dealership, it's really about how do we tell a story to a customer or engage with the customer in a fashion that gets them to see that potentially is the right time to get out of the car they're having at the end of the day. There's things that never change with the car business prices are not going down. I don't think anytime soon. Right. And you're driving a depreciating asset, right? Sure. And so, yes, interest rates high payments are high. These are the things but it doesn't really pencil for you to continue driving the car.

Michael Cirillo: 2:16

You know, it's interesting, though, to your point, I think. Okay, yes, facts you're laying out the facts interest rates are up suppliers data, but I see the Italian and me coming to hang on, but I'm just gonna become a Trump couple guys. Yeah, a couple of dudes. However, now let's introduce some more facts. Take a vehicle away from a family and watch them get their kids to soccer practice,

Anthony Barone: 2:41

right? We've we we tend to go in tandem bicycle

Michael Cirillo: 2:45

tandem. But yeah, sidecar? I don't know, an E bike. You know, can you imagine throwing Gatorade on the back of an E bike and traveling 25 miles to the game on for the whole family. Yeah. So point being though, and I'd love your take on this. Now, you introduce the utility, the freedom that a vehicle brings. Now. Why are we leaning more into that side of the equation?

Anthony Barone: 3:10

Yeah, the feeling you get when you buy a new car? Right feeling? Yeah, right. All that kind of stuff. Yeah, no, I totally agree. And that really just goes back to I think that's where dealerships. It's a it's a new world. Right? Right. What they need to think about is, how do I get the customer to feel that way? Right. And so what we heard a lot today from some of the keynote speakers, panel discussions, whatever is thinking about the customer experience, manufacturers are focused on this more than ever, you know, especially in some brands more than others. How do you give that customer that good experience, that feeling that they're taking care of their family is they're not buying a car, they're making a good decision for the family? Right? Yeah. And that they're giving themselves like you said, the freedom to do the things that they want to do, right. That's the what they get from that vehicle. The other

Michael Cirillo: 3:55

paradigm shift to is, oh, wait, you mean to tell me that you're in a situation to even consider buying another vehicle? Hey, these are the good news. Yeah, we need to be leaning in, in my estimation, anyways, we need to be leaning into the good news. Yeah. Okay. Like interest rate. Yeah. You know, I don't know. I don't know how old you are. I learned never to ask people's age. But I know my parents, the baby boomers were like interest rates were 28 and a half parameter. And like, this is just a fact of life. Of course. Yes. Right. Yes. How long? How long do you think we're going to be in this period of supply a chain and how long are we gonna have to try and mitigate and find alternate opportunities?

Anthony Barone: 4:35

Well, I think one of the most powerful elixirs in sales and at the end of day we're in sales, right? Well, look,

Michael Cirillo: 4:40

he used the word elixir keep going. I gotta write that down. Is

Anthony Barone: 4:44

is that limited time offer, right. Limited time offer combined with you can only get it at one place. Right? Yeah. And so that that message that I think we can be changing the narrative with is, hey, all time high wholesale vehicle value. You write all time high pricing, right? Everything is going the other direction all

Michael Cirillo: 5:06

time high the feeling you get when you smell new car smell,

Anthony Barone: 5:10

right? The value of that car is as high as it's going to be was higher, you already missed out, which is the third piece of that elixir. Right? You don't want to lose any more equity. Sure. Right then you have Yeah, right now and you're right. There are people in unbelievable situations right now that have a real reason to do something right now. And not and not wait another second to do it.

Michael Cirillo: 5:30

Talk to me a little bit more more about this because I know automotive mastermind has all sorts of data available, like the scope of data that you can observe is mind boggling. I thank you. Dare I say you might be the Neil deGrasse Tyson who have automotive data me person you put Yes, yes. Yes. Yeah. You even have that tambor in your voice? Exactly. Yeah. But talk to me. What are you looking at specifically, that's led you to this demand versus traffic? Thesis?

Anthony Barone: 6:04

Yeah. So I think when you don't see traffic, yeah, you may assume that there's not demand. Right. A lot of dealerships pulling back on advertising saying I don't have a story to tell this customer. Right, because the story is bad. Right. And so my, my thesis is like, no, there is demand there. We just need to create the traffic, right? We need to generate an engagement, a story, something that brings that customer who's afraid, who's unsure, right into the market?

Michael Cirillo: 6:36

Yeah. What have you, you know, across your client partner base, what are you seeing that? Maybe is a common thread of what's working well, right now?

Anthony Barone: 6:47

Yeah. I think some of the stuff I've already heard today is consolidating efforts, and thinking more about what activations you're looking for. So one of the biggest pushes in this in this field right now is the CDP that unified database right of customers. Yep. And so that puts the dealership in the driver's seat, right? If you know who your customer is. Now, you have all options in the world to say, how do I want to activate that person? Right? Do I want them in my service drive? Do I want them in my sales funnel right now do what is what is the highest impact to my business? Right? We heard a lot of the people from dealerships so far today talking about, you know, my needs, right. I need my vendors to understand what my needs are. Yeah. And that all boils down to they're also the best person to understand what the needs are the customers, I think this

Michael Cirillo: 7:36

customer Yeah, and this is what's intriguing to me about Dara, I call it the era of CDP's. I know that now that's kind of becoming a little bit of a buzz but in the sense of we're all talking about it, we're hyper aware of it. What I love about it is it's it's causing or encouraging us to think or reintroduce marketing fundamentals like market segmentation. Yep. You make me as you're speaking, you're making me think of oh, now I have greater clarity into who has shown actually shown express interest in a make model vehicle type. Now I have a greater understanding of what phase of the funnel they're actually sitting in. Just because they submitted a lead doesn't actually mean

Anthony Barone: 8:22

you can work a mastermind, that, wow, you're doing a good job, how

Michael Cirillo: 8:26

to push report, you know, you know, because I was on a call with one of our client partners who said, Yeah, I'm really interested in how the market is segmented. And I went. Like, yeah, you said sub market segmentation. Yeah, I almost fainted. Yeah. But I love it because it's making us hyper aware that just because they submitted a lead, you know, it's like going to an ice cream shop where the only flavor is, prey leans in cream, guess which one they're gonna pick pralines and cream. Does that necessarily mean? That's the one they wanted coming in? Oh, Ma. Right. So that's what you're making me think of? I want to turn this back over to you briefly. I've enjoyed this. And this should be a part of a longer conversation. How can those listening or watching get in touch with you learn more about mastermind and get deeper into the Neil deGrasse Tyson?

Anthony Barone: 9:16

Our website is a wealth of information, automotive mastermind.com. We have testimonial videos on there. There's a tremendous amount of content we have some short videos just talking about some of the stuff we've already talked about activating. What are the audiences? How do we activate certain segments? That sort of thing? Yeah, we're active on LinkedIn on Twitter. I don't know if we have Instagram, Facebook. We have some presence there as well.

Michael Cirillo: 9:39

You segmented the market. But

Anthony Barone: 9:43

you know our team is in the field. 24/7 Yun work hand in hand with our dealer partners. Collaboration is such a big part of what we do. Yep. We differ from many people in this space in that sense. So we have somebody if you have a dealership, in in any market America, we have somebody that's living locally. He has automotive experience and can can bring you all the opportunities of master I'll

Michael Cirillo: 10:04

speak from experience that I've been to your website and your blogs are awesome. They're very educational and very helpful. So I definitely encourage those listening and watching to get in touch with that. Other than that man Anthony burrows Strategic Development Manager at automotive mastermind thanks so much for joining me on a salary gun session. Thanks man.

Paul Daly: 10:24

Thank you for listening to this a so to concession by effective if you want more content like this, you can check out our other podcasts we have a daily show called The automotive troublemaker Monday through Friday, here on podcasts also live streamed on YouTube, and LinkedIn and Facebook. We also have a long form podcast called Auto collapse auto collapse. And if you just want to go a little deeper into this community, you should sign up for our regular email we put our heart and soul into it. You can get it for free by going to a sotu.com. We'll see you next time.

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