Attacking Experience with Michael Wood

Kyle Mountsier: 0:00At time of recording oh boy

‍Unknown: 0:08

this is Auto Collabs

Kyle Mountsier: 0:11

there is no longer thick sheets of ice. Were Jeep Wrangler four by fours are sliding down my street is finally gone

Unknown: 0:28

that's exactly it the ice. Okay, that

Kyle Mountsier: 0:31

is the ice song. That's actually I heard that playing in my head. I don't know why, but that's what I heard the playing in my head. Like as I saw the Jeep Wrangler four by four wasn't rolling, just sliding down the hill. So

Paul J Daly: 0:43

wasn't Texas supposed to get ice storms to in the last like two weeks?

Michael Cirillo: 0:48

This is what I love about Texas. Just this weekend. They're like, okay, like all the schools, just just be on alert. It might rain tonight. And I'm like, am I wrong? Give me a break. So

Kyle Mountsier: 1:04

put on your rain tires. Yeah.

Michael Cirillo: 1:08

rain tires.

Unknown: 1:10

It doesn't even make sense.

Kyle Mountsier: 1:11

It doesn't make sense. Which also is why it doesn't make sense that we're just gonna go right into a podcast episode. Today. We've got Michael Wood, General Manager, Jaguar Land Rover, fancy dealer.

Paul J Daly: 1:23

For this. I've seen I've seen him on like episodes of the wheelhouse, right. And like, we haven't met him we have Yeah, if you by the way, if you're listening to this, we have a podcast show called the wheelhouse with Daniel Grover, and it is awesome. And lots of dealers, your guests and they get speak their mind. And I heard Michael Wood on this now I think like twice and every time I see him, I'm like, This guy's got it together. Like so now we get to talk to him and meet him for the first time. Michael, have you ever met Michael?

Michael Cirillo: 1:48

I haven't. Oh, good. Great, grand. So Michael, meet Michael.

Paul J Daly: 1:52

Well, yeah, we'll see. We'll see. That's if you can make your way to the call.

Unknown: 1:58

Regardless of who makes it there, we hope that you enjoy this conversation with Michael Wood. Hey, Michael, it's

Paul J Daly: 2:08

so good to be spending a few minutes with you here today. Thanks for giving us some of your time.

Michael Wood: 2:12

Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. Alright, so

Paul J Daly: 2:16

I'm really excited for this conversation. Because I have seen you in a lot of other content and interviews. And every time I see you, I'm like, Man, he's got it. He's like, he's got it together. Like he understands what's going on. So like, this is one of those times where I'm like, we don't really know each other, but we kind of know each other. So I don't even know. Just tell us a little bit about how you got into the position you're in right now. Because I don't answer. Sure.

Michael Wood: 2:39

I mean, I graduated from the University of Louisville with a degree in political science and economics. And after that, I always had an affinity for sales. I love people. I love being around people and just interacting. I think that comes from my background, my father being a Marine, and we moved around a lot. So I got to live in a bunch of different localities. And if you don't get to learn to introduce yourself to people quickly, you're not going to make friends when you're the new guy. So that's kind of where I think I've got that ability from I originally got into like, you know, marketing sales. And then I got into timeshare sales here in Virginia Beach for a little bit, which was absolutely

Kyle Mountsier: 3:16

legit Wait, because just so you know, I grew up in I grew up in Richmond in my elementary school years. And my family was like, known known for weathering the storm of a timeshare sale. Absolutely the free gift. No, we had it down. The parents were like you don't say anything, we're not buying anything. But we will go on dirt bikes on the sand after this. Good.

Paul J Daly: 3:44

When I give you this, that's when you start acting up and saying you have to go to the bathroom and you say you got to throw up.

Michael Wood: 3:51

You have to have an exit strategy 100%. We'll get there all day. We all know salespeople are the easiest to close. But at that time, I ended up meeting my now wife and she was living in New York City. So I moved up to New York City and got into orthopedic surgical sales. And being a southern guy, I didn't really enjoy living in Manhattan. So I came back down here and a good friend of mine, my best friend, his brother was actually in the auto industry. And I kept looking at him. I was like, Man, he's got a nice car. It's got a nice house. You know, he's doing all the nice things. It's like maybe I'm missing out on something. So I got into the industry, July 23 2012. first full month, I think I sold somewhere around 15 cars and had the largest paycheck I ever thought I'd seen in my life. And I was absolutely hooked. And so I've been with checkered flag the entire time, started out as a sales associate, went into finance, went to the desk finance director GSM and then in 2021, we made an acquisition of a Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram store, and the dealer and the executive team asked me to go over there and be the general manager and help convert that store to our processes. And then about seven months later I landed where I am currently, which is at our jack Lambert For and Volkswagen campus, you

Kyle Mountsier: 5:02

know, so here's my big question though is, is the suit tie and little pocket flag? Because you're at the JLR dealership or because it's checkered flag like are you that on brand or

Michael Wood: 5:17

it is often that I have to find myself dressing for the occasion. So it depends on which manufacturer is coming in to visit Case in point today, I have a conversation with Jacqueline over on Microsoft team so I'm going to look the part for sure. We're actually going to be moving into what we're calling the modern luxury uniform here at Jacqueline or for Landrover, excuse me, which will get rid of the tie. It'll be like a T shirt under the suit kind of very Miami slash Louis Vuitton style look to add a little bit. Exactly modern luxury. That's

Kyle Mountsier: 5:46

a really no show socks exactly have pants that are just higher than the ankle.

Michael Wood: 5:51

I've got to lose about 30 pounds and look good in it.

Paul J Daly: 5:55

And once they get really dialed in to the look, that's when the black baseball hats come out. Exactly.

Michael Wood: 6:01

I was gonna order one and put it on like for you guys just starting to mess up my hair.

Paul J Daly: 6:05

Yeah, right. You gotta have the hair. You know, I just it just suffered. You said checker flag and years ago, man, I don't I can try to remember like, was a pre COVID I think it was pre COVID. i There was. What is the righteous group? What is it Mike Anderson? Yeah, Mike Anderson was doing a raucous group event in Richmond. He asked me to kind of come speak. I did. And we visited a checkered flag store. Okay, a big one. It was a big one I had like, I

Michael Wood: 6:35

actually remember that. And I think the walls or group was there and you came and visit it. Yeah, I was actually in attendance there. I did a PowerPoint presentation on the effects of single point contact. Yes. And the efficacy. Because I'm like, That's hilarious. I didn't realize that was you? That

Unknown: 6:50

was me. Yes. Oh, so funny that this is I'm like, put the peed my brains like no, you know, you've been with him at some point. That's yeah, I was all I can remember about the checkered flag visit was the intensity of the service bay. It was unbelievable. It was like,

Michael Wood: 7:07

You got to enjoy. I mean, that's our Toyota store. It's our flagship store. You know, they do about 5500 repair orders a month out of there. And it's got a beautiful racing theme to it. Yeah. We did that in conjunction with Toyota some years ago when we did some remodeling. And I mean, that thing is a beast and you know, the service manager there. Mashallah. She runs a wonderful operation.

Paul J Daly: 7:30

I remember I made an impact. It definitely did. That was a while ago, I want a different life. That seems like wait, what what year was that?

Unknown: 7:36

I think that was 2019. I think, yeah. 2019. Have you guys been doing the single point of contact selling then. So

Michael Wood: 7:42

we, we transitioned in the fall of 2015, with our Hyundai Volkswagen division, because at that time, they were on the same campus. And then about three to four months later, we transitioned the Toyota store and the Honda store. And then within about a year, year and a half, I'd say we went total platform as far as US cars with and then we are now fully as of January one this year, all operations are negotiation free, Land Rover, and Porsche were the last ones to move into that. And we did that as of January 1. So we're super excited.

Paul J Daly: 8:12

What a huge deal. It was Thursday, November 7 2019. I just had a search it on my and here we are. I love it. I love it. So what what is the what do you actually oversee? Right now you just mentioned a number of different brands and leisure part like what is your actually role entail?

Michael Wood: 8:31

So I'm the general manager of the Jacqueline river store, as well as the Volkswagen store. So I handle you know, obviously, also, fixed operations are very operations for both stores.

Paul J Daly: 8:40

Gotcha. Understood, understood. So what are you what are your aspirations this year, a lot of people getting into 2024 with kind of like, audible mentality, right, like, Alright, let's see which way this is going to run. But obviously, one of your brands being Highline one of your brands being not highlighted, how are you approaching that as a GM? Like, is there a disparity between the two?

Michael Wood: 8:58

Absolutely, I mean, there's two completely different approaches, because we're working with two different economies. I mean, when you're looking at a Range Rover customer whose average income is$547,000, and then you try to, you know, parse that against a Volkswagen customer, you know, you have to have two different experiences. But I've said that they're not going to be that different. You know, for me in 2024, what I'm looking for is an all out attack on experience. I believe that, you know, we're in an existential crisis when it comes to the dealer franchise model. And it's self inflicted, but we can also fix it. And it's going to come from obviously fixing the two main touch points, which are fixed operations when you come in to service your vehicle. And then variable operations when you come in to purchase one. It goes without saying that those need to be on point, but I'm talking about the in between, you know, when we're not actually trying to extract a sale from somebody, when we're just adding ownership to the to their overall experience, or excuse me, adding value to the overall ownership experience. You know, we just did a defender event down in the Outer Banks in October, where we invited 15 Defender owners down, we brought the Land Rover experience team in from the Biltmore. You You know, I set up with Barney and a winery to do a virtual wine tasting with their head sommelier. And you know, yes, it was an expensive event in event Excuse me, but everybody loved it. Everybody had a great time. I didn't ask them for anything. I didn't try to sell them anything. Exactly. You know, I want repeat and receptive of results, excuse me repeat recidivism business. And that is only going to occur when we can continue to over deliver from what they expect from us. And that's where I think we need to win, we need to add more touch points into the consumers ownership, where we're not trying to extract anything from them. And yes, it will cost money.

Paul J Daly: 10:33

Let me let me let me just ask for another texture, because you just mentioned a very expensive event, right? That is for the $537,000 a year average. Yep. How do I translate that for Volkswagen? Great question.

Michael Wood: 10:47

And, you know, for us, what we're gonna do is we're gonna get more involved with the Volkswagen Tidewater club. You know, we've got some really cool vintage cars and our showroom. You know, in the Volkswagen side, we've got a 23 window Samba bus, we've got Karmann Ghia, we've got two antique beetles. So I think we're gonna lean more into that and inviting more guests to come over to the dealership, you know, some coffee and cars type things. Honestly, I'm really interested to see what my team brings to me, you know, we, we live in this idea of meritocracy at my campus, so the ideas don't flow down, they flow up and down. So I'm really interested to see what my sales management staff comes up with, and what my product specialists come up with, as far as what they believe is gonna really have an impact on the consumer. Yeah,

Kyle Mountsier: 11:27

it's, it's the reality is is like every brand, has, Subaru does it best? Well, I'll just like start and end and agree with that with like the user persona or the driver persona. But every every brand has some level of like driver persona within it. Sometimes it's attached to a particular model. Sometimes it's attached to the overall brand. But like, the defender, clearly has Highline luxurious vacation, you know, probably, you know, probably people that love wine already. Right. I understand what Assam is. And you've leaned into that there's probably that persona within Volkswagen, right? Like, it's beetle lovers, they just they just, they eat it up, they go to town they're looking at they've got Instagram, you know, Volkswagen bugs rolling across their, their profile all day. And I'm sure that exists in I can't think of a brand that that doesn't exist in

Michael Wood: 12:22

I would, I would 100% agree. And I think that was one of the smartest things that JLR did this year by you know, bifurcating into the house of brands, because to your point, a Range Rover customer is different from a defender customer, which is different from a Volkswagen customer. And within Volkswagen, I mean, you've got those people that are just crazy about their golf, ours, you've got the Jetta enthusiast, you know that they create a cult following. And you know, with the ID buzz coming out this year, and the ID seven, you know, it's time to lean into that stuff so that we can get people excited and put the phone back into buying cars. I

Kyle Mountsier: 12:54

remember we used to you know, I was at Mazda stores, we would have like Miata days, right? And I'm telling you, you couldn't keep people it was on a leash. I mean, Miatas everywhere we put them we let them go back. And you know, we had a tech dedicated that would put me cover me out as up on a lift, and it was insane. So I know that that by what's How do you when you're thinking about the cost of that, right? Because typically, when we're looking at marketing expenses or expenses across the departments like that one, you can't go like, Oh, that's a sales expense. Oh, that's a service expense, or that's like, oh, I I'm gonna calculate that into this month's marketing cost of acquired sale or anything like that. Are you like from a just raw accounting level? Are you looking at the p&l differently now, because of that? Yeah, you

Michael Wood: 13:46

know, one of the things I'm measuring, you know, we've only done the one event. So far, we've got a couple more for Jaguar Land Rover setup, and one setup for VW in the near future. But what I'm looking at is the ability to reduce when it comes to third party vendors. So case in point, you know, I got rid of cars.com, you know, because I want more traffic on my tier three site than then paying to send people to another site in hopes that they come back to my site. And so if I'm going to if I continue to grow, and I'm able to lower my marketing expenses, then for me, yes, I can't say that that's exact causation. But there's definitely has to be a correlation between the experiences that we're providing with the customer and the reduction in the need for marketing expenditures. So we're a little early to be able to kind of like analyze that fully. But we do get support from Jaguar Land Rover as well so it does offset the expense and it makes it very palatable and what's really nice is having the backing of the dealer you know, when he's you present these wild ideas and you're like I'm gonna spend money and then he says do it you know, it's it's kind of exciting you know, because most of the dealers are like, you know, that mentality that they want to reduce reduce reduce, you know, our dealer has an opposite mentality, I can bring him an idea that could add a million dollars to the bottom line, but if it increases the customer's effort to transact it's a non starter.

Paul J Daly: 14:57

Got it. Wow. Wow. I mean, the oil, he's going to add a million to the bottom line as in generate a million dollars in profit. Right. But if it makes the process longer and more difficult, he's out. He's out. Yeah,

Kyle Mountsier: 15:12

he said, and that's, that's massive, because every most people in the industry would be like, whatever you have to do, to add a million dollars doesn't really even matter what the customer feels, what

Michael Wood: 15:24

does that that person is playing checkers, they're not playing chess, we're a 60 year old family owned organization. And so we're not looking for the short satisfaction, I don't want to sell just one car to you, Kyle, I want to sell you, I want to sell your wife, I want to sell your kids, or sell your auntie and your uncle, I want to sell everybody in your family. Because we've created an experience that is diametrically opposed to what's being offered in the marketplace. And broken windows broken business, they say the way you earn a customer over to us by being demonstrably better. Well, that means the experience has to be significantly better than what's out there. And it doesn't have to be the best price. Customers want a fair price, a transparent process and an advocate. And by taking away some of the things that we've done, like no commission, etc, it really creates a level of advocacy for the staff with their consumers.

Kyle Mountsier: 16:11

That's one of the things that I that like when I talked to people about, hey, what are you doing for experience, and like, I know, some people are doing the one price of the one person out there, but the one price thing like customers, always I'm gonna have to have the best price in the market every time and I'm just gonna lose margin. But what I'm hearing from you and from my experience is that that's not, that's not always the case like you don't, it's not, it doesn't continue to be a race to the bottom, as you create this dynamics. Yeah,

Michael Wood: 16:41

you have to pay to play, you know, in the beginning, you're gonna have to be the best price because that's the cost of entry, you want to make sure that you can get the people through the doors. And at that point, you have to deliver that different experience. And over time, as you continue to deliver that different experience. It does afford you to increase your front end price points. But we're not talking about being the highest price in the market. But we're also not talking about being the lowest, there is a value to the customers and they say it loud every day with being transparent and an open. I mean, if you take the state of Virginia, I believe I could be off on 2023 numbers. But I think seven of the 10 largest used car dealerships were Carmax. I mean, I don't know what more of a statement you need than that to say, hey, we want to transact differently. You know, we've always put the customer into the box that's most profitable for us, instead of asking the hard questions of how do you want to transact and then building the profitable box around that. That's the future. That's what our industry has to do.

Paul J Daly: 17:40

So you've definitely seen a lot of the pain and have you used the dealer, right, the other management team have been willing to engage the pain and the discomfort of transitioning to like, single point of contact, right. And you've that has been very intentional. We're in a day and age where there are a lot of dealers kind of circling the runway on that, or seriously considering it in a way they never had before because of the current climate. What would you say to them? Like, what were the biggest hang ups when you were making the decision to go in and the biggest pain points? And what did you learn on the other side when you push through them?

Michael Wood: 18:15

So what I will say is that it has to start with the dealer, you know, Mr. Schneider came in, and he told us, you know, the chips been turned around 180 degrees, there is no motor, there are no oars, we're not turning back around, this is the future. And this is the path. And there has to be that sort of dedication from the dealer to start with. But then once you transition, it's kind of about pointing out things to the customer and to the to the customer as a customer because I feel like my employees are my customer. But you have to point out things. You know, one of the big things when you go to commission free is, oh, I can't make you know, $2,000 on that deal anymore. No, but what were you making per car in the traditional model, and let me show you what you can make per car in this model. And if you can sleep a little bit better at night, and your per car average stays the same. It's not a win doesn't doesn't make you a little bit happy. And that's what we found. I mean, our averages are quite high when it comes to pay per car. But that's because we expect an experience and we get to deliver that by paying the product specialist what they're deserved. You know, their job is to find the least expensive vehicle that best fits the customer's need at any one of our locations.

Paul J Daly: 19:19

All right. So there's so much to chew. I've heard those words before,

Kyle Mountsier: 19:24

I'm sure you have. I think you and I know some of the same people might I think.

Michael Wood: 19:32

But that's good, because that means the message is getting spread around and that people are seeing that I what I really hope that comes out of COVID is that we realize that we can get to a point to where pricing no longer matters, because isn't that what COVID showed us? I mean, we went from$2,500 below invoice on Toyota Camrys to $5,000 above. And at the same time demand was always there. So it's never really been about price. It's always been about how we treat the customer and we've all We've made it about price. We've always said, Well, you know what, we're not going to fix who we are, we're just going to discount our way to a sale. And that is not sustainable.

Kyle Mountsier: 20:08

To ask the question, absolutely, we

Paul J Daly: 20:10

did. Yeah, et cetera. Alright, so we don't have we only have a couple minutes left here. But when we think about leading your team into 2024, a lot of leaders we know like, well, a focus, a word, a trajectory, what is your focus in team leadership in your stores in 2024?

Michael Wood: 20:28

So I just finished reading a book by David McColl. And now I'm moving on to what is it unreasonable hospitality, and I started reading the insert this morning from Simon Sinek. And I wrote it down because I thought it was it is gonna be my mantra for 2020.

Paul J Daly: 20:43

We lost him right before hold. I lost him the best party back. He'll be back, we'll

Kyle Mountsier: 20:47

get we'll both grab the book. Yeah, I'm

Paul J Daly: 20:49

looking for nine right now. You said, we lost you for a second. But we lost looking around for our copies of unreal, I

Michael Wood: 20:56

don't know where it is. But it'd be right in the intro from from Simon Sinek. He says something that says the two cannot be separated, great service cannot exist without great leadership. And for me, I feel like that that makes sure that I'm always looking out for my staff, that I'm making sure that pay plans are fair, that I'm making sure that they're taking their time off. When I do the time cards every two weeks, I'm looking at how many hours they're working per week? And is it fair to them? You know, it is also fair to the dealer? Are they working too little? Or are they working too much. And often we find specifically when it comes to service consultants and product specialists, ie sales associates, that they're spending their lives here, but that's not what we signed up for. Nobody did. You didn't come to this job saying hey, I will give you my life in exchange for an income. You said I'll give you 40 to 45 hours a week in exchange for an income. And my my driving force for 2024 is getting as much productivity and efficiency out of those people in the time that they need to be here, not a minute longer. I want them out there with their families doing what they should be doing.

Kyle Mountsier: 21:54

I love it. Well, hey, look, you are going to wildly enjoy that book. I've read it a time and a half. I've got to finish the the second time through at this point, Paul and I are committed to it. And by by note that that's what you're committed to in the books that you're reading. I know that you're leading an incredible team and the work that you've done, I think will be an encouragement to a lot of people. So thank you so much. On behalf of myself and Paul, for joining us here on auto flex.

Michael Wood: 22:22

Appreciate it. Thanks for everything you guys are doing. And thanks for having me.

Kyle Mountsier: 22:28

You didn't even make it to the

Michael Cirillo: 22:31

go guys. How was it?

Paul J Daly: 22:36

So the funny thing is Michael Cirillo didn't make it to the call. So Kyle, and I got to talk to Michael would all do ourselves. And I know

Michael Cirillo: 22:45

what I'm really concerned about as the people that watch in particular, if you're watching our intros and outros you're like, but why are they all wearing the same clothes because my closet continuity, people continuity,

Paul J Daly: 22:57

the continuity, the steps that we take to have visual continuity are actually pretty fun and humorous. One day, maybe we'll make a beat roll of that. But but let's be real. If you go in any one of our clothes, closets, it's kind of like you're shopping at a retail store where you just have like, 20 of the same thing. It's

Michael Cirillo: 23:17

the Henry Ford mentality. It's like you can

Paul J Daly: 23:21

black. Yeah, as long as it's black. I mean, it's the Mark Zuckerberg, it's the Steve Jobs like, Oh, we're the same thing. So it's

Kyle Mountsier: 23:27

the same type of innovation that Michael was talking about, actually. And this actually is a really good segue into this because for them as an organization to way earlier than anybody else in the country, maybe then like save 10 dealer groups, be thinking about one price single point of contact, the things that like now, in 2024, it's starting to become a normal conversation. I very in the last week gotten three requests for who do you know that does this? Who do you know, that does it? Well, they were doing it back then. Like they've always been pursuing a better customer and employee experience. Without

Paul J Daly: 24:07

that, let me give you a little insight to that. I didn't share with either of you before the interview, Michael made a comment on one of my LinkedIn posts, and it was a post about pretty much like if we had a session at ASOTU CON, that was like how to be a great parent and a great professional and brought in somebody a professional to help us like navigate like parenting while we're busy and finding balance there. Michael's response, his comment to that post was this. I don't have kids. But I really want to go to that session. So I understand my team who has kids and even more, and I was like that is exactly

Michael Cirillo: 24:43

what we're talking about person business person. Yes, business

Paul J Daly: 24:46

person, human person. People that loves people more than he loves cars and fancy enough that happens to make him a really successful dealer. So on behalf of Kyle Mountsier, Michael Cirillo, and myself, thank you so much for Joe Joining us for this conversation. I hope to see you next time on Auto Collabs. Sign

Unknown: 25:04

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