Generations of Empathy with Dave O’Brien and Sean O’Brien | 2024 NADA Show

Paul J Daly: 0:06

All right, we're sitting here with two generations of automotive empathy. I'm gonna call it I know, you're

‍Kyle Mountsier: 0:14

gonna like a brand

Paul J Daly: 0:16

new generations of automotive. See

Dave O'Brien: 0:18

a trademark coming.

Paul J Daly: 0:20

Father, Sutton, both serving the community of dealers by training and building empathy. So yeah, I'll just go with that. Thanks for joining us today. No,

Dave O'Brien: 0:28

this is awesome. I still get such a kick out of last year running up there when we kicked it off at the opening gate. Yeah. And that was super fun. Yeah, Sarah, and I have with you guys. So yeah, it wouldn't be an NADA without us.

Kyle Mountsier: 0:40

Hanging out? Absolutely. And this is you guys have definitely thrown down this year. It's a really nice space that you've got and having conversations in totally different than your last year space, for sure.

Dave O'Brien: 0:52

Remember, we were so crowded? No, it's been incredible growth this year. And you know, that it's, it's this team full of folks, is you guys know, with what you've done with your brand. You know, we get to do these things. And they do magic, you know, all the time. So that's, that's

Kyle Mountsier: 1:11

back there, too, for sure. All right. So when we think real quick, just because I just thought of this. In our business training companies, people that are dedicated to the training of our industry, that is their sole mission in their company, are not high growth companies historically. Right? Which kind of blows my mind. Because if you ask anyone, what's the most important part of your company? It's like, we have to train our people. We have to get our people good. Yeah. Yeah, for some reason. It's not actually put at the center. It's not scheduling in the day, it's not prioritizing our finances, it's not prioritizing our partners. Why do you think that is?

Dave O'Brien: 1:56

So? I think you guys will understand this, because I know how you feel about dealers, right? In my leadership class today, I say to them, I don't think things go wrong in the dealership because managers are bad, lazy, or just not trying to do their job. I think we're in an industry that has always been very transactional. And every day we go, Okay, how many leads came in last night? Okay, do we have assigned? How many unfinished tasks from the day before? How many cars we have to sell today? What was our gross yesterday? What's our contracts in transit? Right? How many? How many cars carried over in the shop yesterday? What do we have to get parts for it? We just, we think transactional? In the spreadsheet? Yeah. And then somebody goes, Hey, could you slow down? And could we go take an hour in the training room? And let's work on developing our people. And they go, Okay, but what if the dealer asks about the unfinished leads from yesterday? And everybody goes, yeah, so let's take 10 minutes in the training room. And then let's go work on the CRM I, I think it's good hearted people in a system that just doesn't easily conform to let's develop our people. Yeah.

Kyle Mountsier: 3:08

And you were telling us like, obviously, in your role in leading kind of the community management side of, of everything that you guys are doing the the, like, interaction day to day with the people that are wanting this level of connection, that that training, they're asking for it right? What are you seeing in the activity of the people that say, I need more? I want, I need to know more? And why and how are they interacting with that type of like, day to day work right now? Well,

Sean O'Brien: 3:38

they show up the ones who do want it right, you know, every time we go out and visit or we jump on a zoom call, you know, these people are saying, you know, like, I don't know how to answer these kinds of leads, or what do I do when this happens? Or what do I do when I can't get someone to pick up the phone? Right? What we find is they're under such like a high stress environment as well, where it's, you know, I gotta get more leads, I gotta hit my numbers at the point where they're itching to get back out on the floor, but they also want the help. So it's almost like a clash, right? And so they need to find the time and they need motivation to find that time. And, and so that's really the biggest gap is, you know, how do you carve out that time for them and give it to them in a meaningful way that sticks as well, because the other thing too, is they go back out there, and they just go back to work. Right? So getting them to hear it, and just practice it and then use it is really the next step. You know,

Paul J Daly: 4:26

talk about your role for a second because when you talk about community manager, what do you actually mean? Yeah,

Sean O'Brien: 4:33

it's all over. You know, at the end of the day, it's like a little personal coach, a moderator I've played a therapist before on the phone. Yeah,

Paul J Daly: 4:42

sure. Yeah. No one in the auto industry on the front lines of therapists.

Sean O'Brien: 4:48

Especially someone as unqualified as me, but it's really whatever you need, right? As a salesperson, you know, I remember my first day on the sales floor, I had zero training and I took a customer within the first 30 minutes That's right. And so they they're desperate for, you know, guidance. You know, they don't know how to take phone calls, they don't know how to, you know, show a demo a car properly, they don't know how to overcome any objections, right, they just go back to their manager. And they're, and they ask their manager for advice, and they come out and the customer says something, they Oh, let me go talk to my manager again. And so what they really need is someone to be able to reach out to who's going to be able to actually work through those things with them, give them real tangible tools, and whatnot. And so a community manager can do anything from that to just talking to him, right. What you know, will answer chats will give you advice on phone calls will talk to you about overcoming objections. And the best part is, you can get us within five, five to 10 minutes all answer a chat in less than a minute. Right. And so that's the key is they don't have that kind of support. So many of them just kind of feel lost, or or they got to figure it out for themselves. And that's why you see so much turnover at the end date as well to not

Paul J Daly: 5:55

love the title. Because as a community manager, what community he's like, Well, the people we train, yeah, yeah, it's like even the adoption of it as a community and not a client, or a customer, or, you know, life support. Right? Yeah, no, so community, and we're here to

Dave O'Brien: 6:12

my partner, Ken Herford, who's our co founder, right? From day one. He said, Dave, we can't just drop people in technology. You can't just go from a human helping them learn to a, here's some technology, go keep learning, go play the game. He said, You got to keep a community, you've got to let them talk. You gotta let them play together. Soon, we'll have team chat, where they can help each other. Right. And, and I don't think any of us are just ready to be dropped from learning into tech. Okay, have fun. So what he does is, it's the life's breath,

Kyle Mountsier: 6:49

how do we get that adopted more broadly? Because, like, right now, maybe an individual who's talking kind of like, take on, take that on, but there's a lot of forces outside of just like a general managers desire to get their people good, that come into play, like, you know, pressure from outside pressure from the consumer pressure from the dealer pressure from the OEM. That all like puts that at odds with my day to day activity. How do we get that more broadly? I mean, outside of like, the awareness of sitting here and podcasting, what does it take to make that a broad scope? Where not just a GM cares about it, but like, the GM is supported by the industry?

Dave O'Brien: 7:30

Yeah, it's a hard problem. I think you guys were ahead of the market with love people more than cars. And I think we're still stuck in that same place. We're, we're ahead of a marketplace, because so when I tell dealers about the community, they go, Well, they won't be able to talk to people at other dealerships. Will they? Right, that's yes. And I go, I look at the dealer and I go, you know, they do already. Right. Right. He goes, What do you mean, I go, Well, there's Facebook groups. And then there's this thing called Reddit, and there's Reddit channels where they even exchanged pay plans, because they show my pay plan to people and I go, Oh, yeah, sure. You they're in community already. Now, the question is, can we create a positive learning community? So I just don't lose track of who these people are? Because we're in dealerships still. They are a single mom with two kids who decided to give automotive a try. They are a boy and a girl who have a baby together, who desperately want to get out of a crummy apartment. And he doesn't want this job not to work. Yeah, you saw them. You saw them. We all know what they look like, and they deserve better in their opportunity to learn. And my last part of the answer is, it's why our learning only happens on mobile devices. Right? Because I think you have to let learning and community happen when and where they want already. Instead of No, you must sit at a computer in the dealership and watch videos.

Paul J Daly: 9:01

Log in here. Yes, yeah.

Kyle Mountsier: 9:04

Log in here to sit on this thing that you don't like to sit on anyway and watch this long video that really in a format that you don't want to want you eight that doesn't look like and feel like YouTube Tik Tok, Twitter, Instagram, that your stuff you'd

Paul J Daly: 9:19

rather be watching, right? Yeah. So Well, gentlemen, listen, I wish we have more time. We'll certainly have more conversations. I love two generations working to solve the same problem. Thank you for the work that you do together. And

Dave O'Brien: 9:32

we got fun stuff to share with you great stuff coming. So anytime you want us tell chaton soon

Sean O'Brien: 9:37

I'm sure I've been pitching him on getting billboards with us back to back you know, as long as you have matching

Kyle Mountsier: 9:44

suits, matching suit, whatever, whatever generations of empathy.

Dave O'Brien: 9:48

You got the tall thread in our family. I don't stand next to him and pictures very

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