Connection Over Course Correction with Tony Gomez and Scott Turner | 2024 NADA Show

Kyle Mountsier: 0:06

All right, we are sitting here at Tony and Scott, quantum five Q five as I've heard it, it's like a whole new thing. Thanks for joining us, gents.

‍Tony Gomez: 0:13

Thanks. It's great to be here. Yeah. And thanks for doing that thing you guys are doing. I love it. Yeah, we're very much in line. Awesome.

Kyle Mountsier: 0:18

Yeah. Oh, no, there is a lot of alignment. And I think one of the really big pieces of alignment actually, you know, Paul wrote a book a few years back, the dealerships that I was a part of, were transitioning the way that the store process goes, and we're still in this place in our industry where what the consumer is asking of us, in their engagement with us is still not being met by what we actually do. And you in particular, in the dirt with the actual experience that that is being presented by dealerships every day. Yeah. Where do you see what we need to change? Like, right now, as the most, the biggest impact factor to how our business interacts with clients? It's

Scott Turner: 1:02

great question. When we talk about frictionless sales, we automatically think about a process that the salesperson or advisor, if it's frictionless service that they have to follow. And it starts internally, it starts mentally, right, like, you have to first start thinking of how can I be more aware of what the customer is saying, right? I think too often we're thinking of, what's the next step? What, what does my manager want me to say? And we start course correcting instead of connecting, right? So I think we've gotten better at our T shirt. finds everything, you start asking, I think we've gotten better at asking good open ended questions, you know, hey, what are we trying to accomplish? What are your goals and things like that? Unfortunately, yeah, the answers start coming. And we start thinking, Oh, I'm not supposed to talk about that, or wait, that's later in the process or something like that, rather than truly listening and connecting, and asking good follow up questions, probing and paraphrasing, and letting the customer know that we really wanted to have a conversation, this just wasn't a step to get to my next step in the process. It's

Tony Gomez: 1:59

such a great just to piggyback on that. I love that you say that, because it's very true with the customer. So much of what we do is, is focused on listening. And being present in the conversation, we always say we're trying to help teach our salespeople, service people, customer facing people to have a conversation with people again, because when you're thinking about your process, and what you're supposed to say next, you're not listening, present anymore, you're not present in the discussion, and they know it and so ties into exactly what you're talking about sounds

Paul J Daly: 2:28

like an incredibly human approach, right? In any type of communication, relationship. trust building, right? It's like, I mean, it's like kind of the basics, like

Kyle Mountsier: 2:38

imagine me and my wife having a conversation. And my whole goal is to just get her to go to the restaurant that I want to without actually telling her that

Paul J Daly: 2:47

it sounds like you've had an experience here. No.

Kyle Mountsier: 2:50

I will not claim that. That would break the relationship every single time. And that's what you're explaining is like, okay, instead of just like building only a process that's frictionless. Build a relationship, this friction. Yeah, you know, it's totally different moods.

Scott Turner: 3:07

Exactly. Yeah, you don't need a process, you need a person who's equipped with those skills. That can be the frictionless solution. Right? Like, I think, like I said, In the beginning, the awareness is it's

Kyle Mountsier: 3:17

a one liner for like, I'm up. I'm just trying

Scott Turner: 3:20

to keep up with you guys. You guys are? But yeah, like, if our first question is like, when someone calls into the dealership, yeah, you got to stop number for me or something like that, right? We're putting the customer to work as opposed to telling the customer something like, You know what, let me grab something to take notes. So I can better assist you with that. Right? So now instead of trying to find the stock number in this, like vehicle listing, they're picturing me at the dealership at my desk for taking notes. That's brilliant. Yeah, exactly. Right, right from the start. And that just facilitates a lot better, you know, conversation going forward?

Paul J Daly: 3:51

Well, any any system like franchise system, what they always say is like, How can I create a role and a process by which I can have the least qualified person possible? Fill the position? Yeah. Now, in historically in the industry, industry, solve that with word tracks. Right. Okay, well just spit out what I'm going to say to you. And then, you know, here's the journey, the steps to the sale, like a 1234. And this seems just, like a much more dynamic. And I don't know, I'll use the word frictionless, even though we're using that, but wait to get somebody like, I'll say the word emotionally engaged with it. Because that's really what it is, like what you just said, is triggering actually, an emotion in me where I all of a sudden feel like someone is like my advocate. Yeah. As opposed to someone that's just going to okay, I'm already nervous. And you're asking me for information that I'm not familiar with, because I don't use stock numbers in the normal life, right? So like all of these things, just really bring emotion and humanity into the process.

Tony Gomez: 4:49

But to expand on your question, Kyle, because we know what the customer wants, and we know how to deliver that. But when is when is the dealer body when are we going to what's going to be that moment? That's serves as the catalyst for change what we know it's out there. It's

Kyle Mountsier: 5:05

not it's not that we know what the customer it's that we know what we want, like, how, how is it? I think it's an every business, how is it that we get into the business vertical that we're in, and all of a sudden we're like, we'd like to eject ourselves from our own human band

Paul J Daly: 5:21

in the way we act in every other scenario.

Tony Gomez: 5:24

Yeah. Because we are a customer to the one delivering that you do the same process and have the same level of expectation. Yeah.

Kyle Mountsier: 5:30

So yeah, what do you think would be the catalyst? Like when do we actually go? Well, I'm we're done with it. Like, we're gonna think it we're gonna do this as an industry wholesale.

Tony Gomez: 5:39

I think we're witnessing it happen today. And what I've always had in the past is, having been in the retail sector for 35 years running dealerships, I can tell you that there were often times that I knew I wasn't making it as easy as I should. I knew I probably wasn't doing it right. And so the big question, so why did you continue to do that Tony, a didn't know another way. Fear of that my processes that I've been trained on for 30 years were rooted in control and manipulation. And that's how I got that's how I won. That's all I knew. So you want me to now we're getting into it. You weren't meant to give up control and go into an advocacy base help them by I mean, I heard advocacy. And I talked, you know that in our world, that meant, that meant you were weak salesperson, you're folding the whatever the customer said, Yeah. And what's happening today, the reason it went that way, for so long is because as dealers, we weren't holding ourselves accountable to a higher standard. Nobody was, but guess who was holding us accountable. I said the road to the sale is dead. It's been dead for decades. And the customer is the new architect. And what we wouldn't do as a dealer body what we wouldn't what we wouldn't do, guess who's doing it now, third party, big online vendor, we're watching it happen. We won't do it, they're gonna do and so I say, the person who you got to worry about are not these big bucks online retailers, the Amazon that's happening, who you got to worry about is that dealer down the street, who has realized and crossed over and said, You know what, I have to change. I have to figure out how to make it easier for our customers to buy a car part or service or a product.

Kyle Mountsier: 7:17

Yeah, yeah. And the customer is gonna say they're just gonna stop Yeah,

Tony Gomez: 7:21

so it's gonna happen on its own back out. Yeah.

Kyle Mountsier: 7:25

And they're gonna back out. I like I think between the two of you just expose so much in our in our industry. That is, we don't talk about that. We talk about how do we fix the technology? How do we fix the process? How to Not how do we become human again, as an industry? It's Yes, the theme of this. Tony, Scott, thank you so much for spending a little bit of time play grats on what you're doing with quantum five and for Hey, coming out of the 30 years and seeing the license as this is who I was, it can't be that way anymore. That's movement for our industry. Thank you guys.

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