Give the Customer All the Pieces of the Puzzle with Andrew Breedlove | Auto Collabs

Kyle Mountsier: 0:00

Hey guys, we're all on a podcast again together

‍Unknown: 0:09

this is Auto Collabs

Paul J Daly: 0:12

I thought we lost her loved.

Kyle Mountsier: 0:14

We lost him. He was gone.

Michael Cirillo: 0:17

I have never felt so logged in a social post before. I saw the two of you dissing you? Yeah. Missing me wondering where I was.

Kyle Mountsier: 0:27

We knew that was the nice one. Oh,

Paul J Daly: 0:30

you should have seen the private slack thread.

Kyle Mountsier: 0:32

Oh nadian. Again, weird about your bald head, your shortness and all that type of stuff.

Paul J Daly: 0:40

Oh, my goodness, gracious. Oh, my goodness gracious. Andrew Breedlove. With iPacket. It is a fun guy overall, he always shows up, ready to go. Whether we see him at NADA, or an ASOTU CON or something. He just just kind of reminds me of the guy who's always ready to play. Right, like put me in. Like, I'll be your fifth man on the pickup team. Like, let's go. So we hope you enjoy this conversation.

Kyle Mountsier: 1:06

All right, we're hanging out with Andrew Breedlove. Of iPacket. And look, if you don't know the iPacket mob of green, then you just haven't been to an event in auto. Andrew. Thanks for joining us today on the show.

Andrew Breedlove: 1:20

Hey, pleasure, guys. Thanks for having me.

Kyle Mountsier: 1:23

Awesome. All right. Real quick. Before we get into your backstory, when did it become apparent that you needed to show up two shows in a mob of green? With everybody wearing the same thing? Green everywhere? Was that like, Was that like a marketing board room? Or was it an accident? What happened?

Andrew Breedlove: 1:42

Um, pretty much honestly, our marketing team. I mean, they're, they're like killers when it comes to like coming up with great ideas. And one of the things was, if we're going to show up at shows, we're going to show up at shows, yes, the sea of green, you'll, in any show that you go to, you'll typically see that.

Kyle Mountsier: 1:58

There you go. I've been like, there's like some seafoam green joke here somewhere. But I

Paul J Daly: 2:03

don't know how that's not seafoam green, though.

Kyle Mountsier: 2:06

It's not it's a nice little enter. You

Paul J Daly: 2:08

know what I mean? Andrew, I always get excited when there's somebody on the vendor side, who has actually spent time in the dealership and is, you know, is very well connected with the front lines, we try to pull up a lot of the frontline mentality as much as we can throughout our content throughout the people we speak with feature etc. Why don't you give us a little background on like, when you first stepped into a dealership and kind of how you fell in love with the industry? And what got you here?

Andrew Breedlove: 2:36

Yeah, for sure. So um, what I'll tell you was, it's kind of like the cycle that everybody talks about. Once you're in the business, you can't get out of it type thing. So I was actually moving back from I used to work for footlocker so you know, big sneaker head guy and whatnot.

Paul J Daly: 2:53

And reason I like you.

Andrew Breedlove: 2:55

Right. And then when I moved back to the area back to my hometown, I was like, oh, there's no footlocker here anymore. And I gotta find a new industry. So I tried my hand and car sales at first landed at the wrong dealership. said I would never go back in the car industry again. And, you know, the

Paul J Daly: 3:14

wrong dealership will do years later wrong. Will do that to you. Initially, a few

Andrew Breedlove: 3:19

years later, I got sucked back into it. My aunt uncle actually had a dealership. Long story short, my mom found out she had a long lost sister that owned a dealership and I was gonna really have another kid and she said, I can make some good money. So I was like, Alright, let's try it. So I landed in the dealership there I was in there for almost three years. Before I got the opportunity to jump on here with I pack it with one of my good friends that invented it from high school. So

Paul J Daly: 3:44

what did you do? Like the good one? Yeah, I was

Andrew Breedlove: 3:47

sales and marketing. So I did sales. But I also dealt with all the marketing all the vendor relationships, all the different setups with with all the different marketing campaigns and coming up with great ideas.

Paul J Daly: 3:59

Got a little bit of both both sides, on both side what it takes to sell a car and this is how we get people to want to buy a car correct

Kyle Mountsier: 4:06

key, like, I'm telling you, having both of those in your pocket, I've experienced that I started in sales, the marketing and ops, like there's there's very few people that actually have that kind of tie. And it is an interesting relationship between those two that until you really know the dynamics is very hard to tell.

Paul J Daly: 4:28

Because that that is like the typical fingerpointing game, right? Like the sales side saying the leads aren't coming in or they're bad leads the marketing set, you're not working them properly, right? Like I hear a lot of that going back and forth and until you kind of and both typically have like a reasonable position to say like this is how it could be better. This is how you can be better than say you should better and so like understanding both sides of that puts you in a really unique position to kind of make peace there, number one, but also to get the best efficiency out of everybody's effort and

Andrew Breedlove: 4:59

art. Get myself in the mirror when one side wasn't working right. Oh,

Paul J Daly: 5:03

we can make great content, the little, little two sides of the argument. I feel like tick tock is made for that kind of video, right? Just get skip playing video.

Kyle Mountsier: 5:12

I feel like your marketing teams just got like the next quarter of content.

Paul J Daly: 5:16

Please let us help you script. It'll be so much fun.

Kyle Mountsier: 5:21

Yeah, that's amazing. So okay, this was cool. I didn't I didn't realize this. So like a high school buddy created iPacket. Basically, yeah, right. That's correct. So was he in the industry already? Or was it like, try the auto tech thing?

Andrew Breedlove: 5:34

Ya know, that's what's unique about us, too. And we actually brag about that a lot as we actually came out of the dealership, guys. So we were invented in a dealership as a process that they used in paper format, and a lot of dealerships do. But his dad's dealership group that he, you know, grew up in basically, you know, from lot Porter all the way up to where he was in management and whatnot. And they had that paper process for years. So evidence manual, right? Yeah, it came, you know, they kind of took it out to a 20 group and kind of pitched it as an idea that they were kind of toying around with and everyone's like, yeah, we'd love a product like that. That's how we get the product.

Paul J Daly: 6:09

I mean, what's so interesting, growing by voice

Kyle Mountsier: 6:13

now that I'm really thinking about it, you know, and maybe we can get to the iPacket thing in a second. But there's really a solve that it's looking for in between marketing and sales, like where you were actually at threat is the pain point, right, the gap between what's being communicated before someone comes in and what they are actually getting to purchase? Right, right. Right. Now, I'm like, now My mind is blown. I'm like, Yeah, you literally put now you are selling and engaging with the product that actually solves the problem of you yelling in the mirror at yourself, right. So Well, for most of the people actually don't know this. There are there are four marketing people backstage of this room right now. And I'm talking to them. This is a marketing campaign. I'm

Paul J Daly: 7:08

telling breaking the fourth, well, Kyle, there's no one, there is no stage, we're just hanging out here. I'm just hanging out, just like we always do. That's great. So tell it tell us a little bit about like, maybe define for people who don't know, what I pack does. Tell us a little bit about the problem you needed to solve and how you specifically are solving it right now.

Andrew Breedlove: 7:28

I mean, Kyle hit on it, you know, you've got so much stuff that dealerships trying to tell the consumer, right, but they're not telling it in a great way, you're getting bits and pieces of it here and there. There's a lot of back and forth. Especially when the consumers on the website, you're putting together a puzzle as a consumer, what if the dealership put together that puzzle for you, but you know, to its role, its roots and form, that old school evidence manual that's worked so well inside of the store for that consumer that actually walks physically in the doors, has worked for years and years as a way to build that inherent value, to show them something outside of the price to get their mind on something. That means more than a price, right? But the digital realm was coming this was back in 2012. When this happened, guys, so we're 12 years in, I mean, we're not an overnight company here, right? And when when you think about that, and it's wrong, this format, that process has worked for years and years, when you bring it into the digital realm, there's so many more doors that you can open with it right now you can answer leads with that same information. So as a dealership owner, or GM, or principal, or whatever you want to call them, right, whatever they like to title to be that day. That resonates really big to them, because they can't sit around and hear everything that comes out of every salespersons mouth every second of the day, they can't be on the website and control what the customer is doing on their different subcategories on their website. So it's just an easy way to get all that information out and then track what the customer is dealing with. And that's a whole nother that's a whole nother conversation that we could jam on for hours and hours.

Kyle Mountsier: 9:01

I mean, for years and years and years. Just as an industry. It's like the walk around is extremely important because it means the customer there are tells them how they're how the how the car meets their needs, you know, specific, you know, details about that car. And then like you said, the old school evidence manual. I mean, I remember back when I started in 2008 2009 it was like we we were responsible for printing one portion of that evidence manual service was doing their part. You know, like the Carfax got printed. It was in a little binder back in the office, right? You brought that up because it built a little bit more value in the actual vehicle, how you recon the car, all that type of stuff. And so when you think about, like, especially now as we're seeing prices start to move back into an aggressive standpoint and you're selling on more than just availability. Right, which has been the last four years. Yeah, the necessity of kind of providing evidence to the value that you present as both the dealership and the vehicle that's sitting in front of them is gaining necessity 100% 100%

Andrew Breedlove: 10:05

It's worked in both markets. I mean, it worked during COVID, too, because people were trying to get information out as quick as possible to capture that customer quickly.

Paul J Daly: 10:12

Ya know, without a doubt, and you know, and Kyle, you just painted a mental picture of like, what people I think stigmatize the car business as and that is, hold on, let me go back behind the magic office and pull it pull out this. I got it. And without meaning I got it right here with the evidence, all the reasoning, you should buy this car, right, which I think that was the way we did it. And now we're in a day and age when people expect and crave and I think we as the auto industry need to provide a high level of transparency. Right. And, and like, how would you how would you address that, Andrew? Because obviously this product brings a lot of that to the situation. But Kyle, your picture is vivid in my mind. I just, I actually imagined, like 20 some year old Kyle, like, tucked in button up shirt walking back out? I got it right here, right? Everything

Andrew Breedlove: 11:06

you need right here. Yeah. But the problem is, and Kyle can probably you know, speak to this, when you would go back to get that folder, a lot of the times the information is missing. So now you look like an idiot coming out and saying, Oh, I was going to get this for you, but I can't find it. Right. So having that information at your fingertips no matter where that customer starts their journey. Whether that's online, in person over the phone, whatever it is, they're leaving the dealership without a car. Now they're not leaving with a forgotten story. They remember everything about you and they use it for you. Instead of against you like they do a number. Right? Because you're showing them hey, this is what's important. If you go the next dealership, you go shop, that's fine. Paul, I want you to go shop, I want you to make the right decision for you and your family. I know it's going to be me because I'm being upfront and honest. And I'm showing you everything that you need to know here. Matter of fact, if you go the next dealership, make sure you ask them these hard questions, because if they start sidestepping you on this, what else might they be lying to you about Paul is

Kyle Mountsier: 12:00

is that where do you see the highest level of adoption? Is it in the BDC? Is it post? You know, post visit? Is it online? Where's the highest level of adoption right now? I

Andrew Breedlove: 12:09

know this sounds so cliche for me to say, Kyle, but it's everywhere. Yeah, I mean, we work with about 2700 partners across the country and we see it from all different avenues, salespeople. BDC. On the website, the engagement that it gets out of there phone ups, phone ups is a whole nother story. I mean, think about it as as a BDC person answering the phone. Sometimes a lot of those people don't have experience in the business. So they're trying to answer as quickly and accurately as possible. But if they can't get the answer for you, the go to Line is Hey, Paul, I know that's important to you. Let me call you back. Right. They gotta call back what happens? Endless phone Jason right. What

Kyle Mountsier: 12:49

What's some examples of like the details that's provided in this level? This digital evidence manual? Will you will you call it? Yeah, I

Andrew Breedlove: 12:56

mean, the MSRP information, the Original MSRP or window sticker for that car, we have about 30 different OEMs direct from manufacturer, the CPO information if it's a certified car, the Carfax or auto check will be in there the brochure for the car, one of the biggest ones the service receipt, that's probably like the hidden investment the dealership has, they don't realize they can make money off of they disclose why they did the work, and that the other dealerships aren't doing that type of work. And then just really anything that they want to put in those packets guys to enhance the storytelling. I like to tell people where the vessel of information to provide as much as we can from our side, but it's your story. You have something unique to you. And it's not the cookies. It's not the coffee, right? You got joked about that before. But it's true. Never the

Kyle Mountsier: 13:39

coffee. It's definitely not the coffee except for at Schomp Honda. In Colorado. That's the only place where the car makes it. Yes, absolutely. But everywhere else. It's not the coffee.

Andrew Breedlove: 13:50

But everyone has a story. I mean, you think back to the marketing days, Kyle, everyone has a story that they want to get out to the customer. But it gets broken down so much between what the customer understands what the salespeople say what the BDC relays and what actually happens. So getting all that

Kyle Mountsier: 14:06

a big, big point is like and Paul, you were saying this earlier, is the the chasm between personnel and the stories that they're telling, right? is most of the time not intentional? Right? It's not like one person is trying to tell the wrong story. The other person is telling a different story, right? It's just the gap of information creates this like Yeah, almost perception of describe it, even though it's not the case. Right? Right. This This aligns everybody with a single

Andrew Breedlove: 14:39

endorse all your information at your fingertips. You

Paul J Daly: 14:42

put put it away. I have never heard it before. And saying every early in, in this conversation where you sit, every customer is putting together a puzzle. Right and we're trying to give them the next piece. I think that's a very helpful visual for anyone who's in sales. or marketing, to think of it that way. Because every customer is looking for a different piece of the puzzle at a different time. Correct. And, and you even said toward the end like this is an opportunity to tell customers what puzzle pieces they actually should be looking for. Right? And a lot of like, you know what I mean? Like, hey, when you go here, they're there, they're, you might have not known, there's like this dark spot on your puzzle, you couldn't see the pieces. And we've just said, you need this piece, this piece, and you need this piece. And when you the moment you do that, I think you build intense trust with the customer where they're like, Oh, thank you for giving me that information. And now I know now I feel smarter, that helps bring the temperature down of the whole conversation and the whole process. I just love that visual. I think that's so I love visuals that are helpful. And I think anyone in sales when you're looking at the customer, and you can see it in their eyes, you know, they're looking for something to be like, what puzzle piece are they looking for right now? And how can I have it right here for them? Yeah.

Andrew Breedlove: 15:56

And not only that, and we'll move on from this conversation on to more fun things here, right. But when you think about that puzzle on the website, there's a lot of it that's already there for the customer, but you're expecting them to put it together the way you want them to see it. Right? What if you already had that puzzle put together for them, they see the picture of what the box should be. And now they go after the puzzle pieces that make most sense to them? Well, is

Paul J Daly: 16:19

that what separates the great websites? Right? Most people can say all the information is on our website, but it's everywhere. But it's in usually in places that you've intentionally blocked them from getting it. Right. Right, and so and so like, intentionally, and then there's a lot that's unintentional, right? It's buried by six popups. Some sliders. It's on a page, right? It's like behind the thing. And so, like, I think that what you're where you're talking about is like, great website designed and great. You know, customer experience design gives people what they need exactly when they need it.

Andrew Breedlove: 16:55

Of course, of course, how do you how else can you build trust and value with somebody you've never met before? Because that's what that customer is on your website, somebody you've never met before somebody you never get a chance to speak to? Unless they actually inquire, right? So how do you do that you give them more and more information to help them build that trust.

Paul J Daly: 17:10

You know, there's a conversation going about how this type of technology is now bleeding into the back of the house. And now they're having more advanced technology, as well as being like from the Recon side being, you know, a very important part of customer retention. And then you know, bringing people back into the sales process, or just having a great service experience and saying yes, to repairs and things of that nature. What's your What are your thoughts on that?

Andrew Breedlove: 17:35

Yeah, I mean, I think you're 100% right on that. I mean, you have to bring it from both sides of the house. Right? Sales is one aspect marketing is one aspect, but but your your bigger, you know, picture that you're going to deal with daily is your fixed ops. So, you know, having that visual on kind of the same scope of what we do here on the sales side. Also bringing it over to the fixed upside is tremendous.

Paul J Daly: 18:01

Well, Andrew, go ahead.

Kyle Mountsier: 18:02

Sorry, go ahead. I was gonna say like, what do you what are you excited about? What's what's the next path? Because your 12 year old company now at this point, right? You're, you're, you're not the new baby company anymore. But you're still you know, you still got some of those startup vibes hanging out. And so what's what's next on the path for you all in enabling enabling dealerships, like what should people be coming to ASOTU CON asking you about?

Andrew Breedlove: 18:28

Yeah, I mean, just continuing the evolution and the product. I mean, we never stand still. I mean, that's one thing is, over the past 12 years, we've never been that company that's been content with what we have. We want to keep pushing the envelope and making things easier from all sides, customer experience, as well as the people are actually using the product. But just what we talked about there a second. Well, Paul, we're also you know, we just launched the NADA iPacket recon. So we did jump in to the fixed upside. So everything that you love about iPacket, as far as the automations, the ease the efficiency and everything like that, we're now bringing it to a side that I mean, I'm not super confident with speaking to the Recon side, because I was never in that. But bring in those efficiencies, and the ease. A lot of the products that I looked at even when I was in the dealership dealing with those vendors, a lot of the fixed up products are just so difficult for somebody to use. So it's hard to get that adoption and that usage out of the back end of the house, because a lot of those people aren't savvy with technology, unfortunately, like salespeople, like the marketing side, right. So getting that automation getting that ease into their hands, to be able to put a bigger emphasis and scope on what they're doing on their fixed upside to start getting that gross because the battle for gross is one as soon as you as soon as you acquire that trade. That's right. When you require when you're acquiring that trade, right? When you're putting the number on it when you're when you're understanding what kind of money you're going to put in recon and everything on that car. That's when your battle for growth starts. So we talked about the margin compressions. It's a lot of time At full of what they did to start with, not what sales is doing.

Paul J Daly: 20:04

That's the epic, the epic conversation right there Andrew Breedlove Sales Director, iPacket. We are so excited that you're going to be joining us at ASOTU CON. So we're looking forward to continuing our conversation there. But thank you so much for giving us some time and inside stay on Auto Collabs. Hey,

Andrew Breedlove: 20:20

I appreciate it, guys. It's a great time hanging out.

Kyle Mountsier: 20:26

Look, you guys never got the joy of walking back to the bullpen. That's what we call it the place where we had to go sit and got on the phones walking back to the bullpen, thumbing through a bunch of manila folders that were used 18 times because we couldn't afford a new manila folder for every card that was 13 cents, bro. They're popping that thing out, praying to goodness that like the CarFax and the tech she and all of the stuff that was supposed to be in there was done by the IRS in there. Right? That was forced to do the evidence manual on all the cars. It was never right. You couldn't and then you walk out to the customer. You'd have like the one thing that you liked the Carfax would paper was still hot because you had to go print it out. You're like, look, I got this evidence manual, all the stuff about the car. Right? That you never got the joy of that. So I'm trying to give you that essence right now is the

Paul J Daly: 21:24

whole point. Sounds like a lot of fun.

Kyle Mountsier: 21:27

It wasn't a lot of fun. So I liked the sales enablement alone to have things and tools at our disposal these days to communicate to customers online and in the showroom, that do that process of the pain that I felt in 2010 is magical.

Paul J Daly: 21:44

I don't know, Michael, do we have anything to add to that?

Michael Cirillo: 21:46

I was. I'm so sorry. I missed that.

Paul J Daly: 21:50

Yeah. Oh, darn.

Michael Cirillo: 21:53

Down to No, I was like, by the way on paper that like Reynolds provided to your dealership? Absolutely.

Paul J Daly: 22:01

Absolutely. So they still do provide the paper, providing the paper like

Michael Cirillo: 22:06

all of that goes to show that sometimes I feel like we we overshoot the mark in our industry. Like, we think oh, in order to be innovative, I have to just push past the mark, when often the answer is sitting right in front of our face. Like what you're saying, hey, what if there was just an easy thing to give to the customer that had all of that together? Boom, done? Well, while Michael

Paul J Daly: 22:30

and I are lamenting the fact that we never will get to go through the bad part of that experience. On behalf of Michael Cirillo, Kyle Mountsier and myself. Thanks for joining us today on Auto Collabs. Sign

Unknown: 22:41

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