The First Rule of Sales with Art Dessein

Paul J Daly: 0:00So like eight or nine years ago.

‍Kyle Mountsier: 0:07

This is auto collabs.

Paul J Daly: 0:10

I got a text on my way home from work and this is back when I was just in the reconditioning business and my wife was like and there's probably some people who can relate to this my wife texted me and said hey, I saw the site among craigslist. Can you go pick it up? Sure.

Kyle Mountsier: 0:28

Okay, fine, I don't know what it was.

Paul J Daly: 0:29

I just was like kind of looking at it over the way I go downtown Syracuse and I have to like walk up to the second second floor of this like apartment Spot that's over top of like a nice coffee shop and knock on the door. I have no idea, you know, it's just like it's always weird when you visit somebody. I think it's weirder when you visit somebody in an apartment because you're already in like this hall and it's like kind of Quiet and like there's just nowhere to go. Right, some dude opens the door. He's got a button. There's like all these shoes outside, he's got a bunch of, like you know, young 20-somethings or early 30-somethings in there and everybody's kind of buzz in and just kind of it's after work and he's like oh yeah, here, the coffee table's in here. I was like okay, look the coffee table. I'm like I guess that's what we bought. I gave him the money for it and he was like it's pretty heavy, you need a hand. I was like no. I was like you want to stay and have a beer? I was like no, that's really nice. But I got, I got to go home. My wife needs this coffee table. Today, turns out, years later, I'm at a digital dealer and there's a company called spin car and I see the guy again Wait a second. And I was like I bought a coffee table from you. It turns out it's today's podcast guest. That's nuts.

Kyle Mountsier: 1:37

Also so quintessential because, like, art is the essence of hospitality. I think nine times out of ten if I'm talking to art, he's inviting me somewhere, inviting someone else somewhere, or asking if I want to come in and have a beer. Like it's just his nature to kind of like be a people connector, gather people together, and that's what I love about. He's just got this big old smile and he's just gonna bring you into the Fold, you know.

Michael Cirillo: 2:04

I was. I haven't yet to be invited.

Paul J Daly: 2:08

Well then, maybe you're about to meet him and you're probably gonna get invited Michael's widow.

Kyle Mountsier: 2:22

All right, we are hanging out with art today, not, not? I don't think you. Are you an actual artist like that would be really, really fun if you actually were like you.

Art Dessein: 2:32

I can watch.

Kyle Mountsier: 2:33

I can.

Paul J Daly: 2:36

Wait a second, maybe recording artists.

Kyle Mountsier: 2:38

I could see you dropping some great Michael when you say when you say cook, are you like a throw it on the grill guy?

Paul J Daly: 2:44

or you're like I'm gonna do the spices in the stuff it up.

Art Dessein: 2:46

He says yeah when we have our executive team in town, I they come to my house and I cook. Oh yeah, oh. Make a lot more drinks when you cook yourself in a restaurant. Wait for the wait stand.

Kyle Mountsier: 2:58

Yeah, he's like wait, wait, wait. Were we talking about like food or drinks? I'm a drink chef, drink chef, that's awesome. So, art, you know the. The people in the industry probably know you from being around conferences and and See an impel formally spin car Kind of stuff, but maybe not know how. Did. How in the world did you get into software as a service In the automotive industry? Where did that come from?

Art Dessein: 3:32

Yeah, somewhat kind of by happenstance. So Devon and Mike who you don't say Devon, mike, who founded the company, and I all went to high school together in Syracuse, okay, and they started a company that was at first that like the. The germ of it was like on augmented reality. So you guys remember when you put your camera over like Not even a QR code but an image, and then this virtual reality thing would kind of pop out. That was, it wasn't really like a marketable thing, but it was something not like.

Kyle Mountsier: 4:07

Then it pivoted into like a 360 it was the purpose of that, for auto was Like nothing with all nothing with auto right like it was, like they were trying this is cool technology.

Art Dessein: 4:19

Back then it was like Revolutionary right. Oh, you put your phone, this like thing, we could probably do something with it. I wasn't part of it back then. Then it moved into it, pivoted into like 360, but not for auto, it was like for a merchant, it was like for like eBay and stuff Like a $5,000 purse, you'd want a 360 like view of it. So it pivoted into that and that's kind of difficult to scale right like. It's kind of difficult to scale both in terms of product. It's not recurring, it's one-time thing. You're dealing with these big organizations like burgdorfs and stuff like that, very like hierarchical and very political. And then we had a. They had a friend who worked for nothing like auto and and very unlike this friend that we had from that worked at Reynolds, was like guys, like People are buying like $50,000 vehicles, like you should have 360s of cars. So a quick MVP was built. That was very rudimentary and it was presented to a Honda dealership in Jersey and they signed up for, by the way, which is more than per month, and what we're currently charging for the product, which is actually kind of funny. But they signed up for it and that was kind of like oh, okay, we kind of have product market fit. Oh, it's recurring revenue, that's kind of nice, you don't have to keep reselling it. And so that kind of took off. The story of us pivoting the auto, rebranding a spin car. Then, obviously a couple years ago, rebranding is in power, but that's like the super short, it's not as organized as that. It was very much left right, it's, it's.

Michael Cirillo: 5:55

How closely do you keep an eye on those other verticals to this day?

Art Dessein: 6:00

um, not a lot. I mean, we do a lot of like work in different like mobility spaces, like we do a lot of work in RV, planes, boats, international markets. We do some stuff in different industries but, um, in terms of the progress that, like some, some of these e-commerce sites are doing around like virtual stuff, yes, you know, like computer vision stuff, but aside from that, we don't keep like a, you know, we're not on top of it how does?

Kyle Mountsier: 6:31

okay, so because, let's because you do have other verticals in mobility that, like, present particular challenges. Seeing 360 around an RV is a lot different than three seeing 360 around a vehicle. What, like? What are the things that that you're able to draft from the way that those industries are, the things that not even just like in merchandising, but the things you learn ancillary to, like, your core tech? What are the things that you're drawing in or seeing and going? Hey, this is something we might need to be paying attention to in that, in the retail auto space, yeah, I mean for RVs for instance, like the RV is not necessarily the exterior, it's the interior.

Art Dessein: 7:15

There's so many rooms, like you guys know Matterport, right, you go in the house and kind of walk you through our building. It's kind of a similar thing that we can do through our technology or we can walk the person through RV and that has like some direct correlation like SUVs, for instance, third row seats folding, not folding. But I think it's also a lot of the computer vision stuff around like the exterior, because if you you go to the RV park and when you shoot the RV it's generally not as clean as like a dealership. There's, there's stuff everywhere right, there's this huge law, yeah. So we did a lot of work through like exterior computer vision. Like we just recently rolled out this like computer vision virtual booth, which is actually pretty, pretty sophisticated, and that kind of the genesis was in RV, because you're not going to put an RV in a on a turntable. There's small stuff, right, but a lot of it's not driven like through the, the core tech. It's driven more through like some of the stuff that we're doing around the computer vision. So we've applied some of those learnings, especially like motorsports and power sports. So Harley, things like that that have helped us kind of enhance the product for for dealerships.

Paul J Daly: 8:28

You. I always see you at events. It's funny, you and I both live in Syracuse and we only see each other never, Las Vegas Tampa like we've never, I don't. Yeah, yeah, I think that's the only time.

Art Dessein: 8:41

Table exchange was the yeah.

Paul J Daly: 8:43

I bought. My wife bought a table off Craigslist like eight, nine years ago and we didn't know each other. I wasn't even in like marketing or tech or any of that and and I just knocked on the door and you answered I didn't know who you were. You're really cool. We like tables in here. Yeah, friends over. You like, hey, you want to come in and have a beer with us? I was like I can't. I got a good stable home, but you're really nice. And then years later I'm like, oh, we kind of know each other. So I always see you at events and you're always talking with dealers. You're always traveling around talking to dealers. You're developing these tech products. That has evolved over time. You know, from this practical application to marketing applications. What is your like? What are you seeing and hearing as when it comes to the dealer mindset, approaching merchandising in general, what are the conversations that are happening?

Art Dessein: 9:29

You got kind of two sets like for groups. Think about like name any group in the US. They're all trying to provide, they're all trying to get consistent with how they merchandise their car. And that's really hard to do because oftentimes they're very kind of like Balkanize or decentralized, right. They have this libertarian mindset which is like you let the, you let the dealer make their own choices, they run their own P&L, they make their decisions. But that results in a very inconsistent way of shooting like a car. If you're talking about merchandising and like they're, they're placed differently, the backgrounds are different and a lot of these groups are pushing the inventory to a group site and so when you're all pushing do it looks like a nice and you really notice like how inconsistent the how the vehicles are shot or how they're not shot. So I think one big push that we've seen I mean from big, you know, publicly traded groups, that the smaller groups is like this push. It's not really about the 360. That's all great right, trying to like Replicate the same experience they have in store, online, and why not give them a 360 when in just pictures? I think the big push is like trying to create a Process that makes it really easy for any dealerships to shoot the car quickly and then, moreover, for the for the customer to be able to present their vehicles in a consistent way, no matter if they have a store in Alaska or if they have a store in Florida. So we've seen that be a big push, that consistency in photography and consistency and how it's. You know the user experience. On the VDP.

Paul J Daly: 10:55

Gotcha, gotcha. And so you see this push for consistency. What are what's the I Don't know like, what's the stuff that Every other dealer needs to think like I'm not, I'm not alone in this struggle. You know what I mean. Yeah that's the consistency in photos. Are there other things? Or is it like we kind of have this mostly figured out? We just need some consistent implementation? I.

Art Dessein: 11:21

It's too bad. There's not like a like, there's not like a silver bullet, because some have like lot service providers and some do it in-house. You know, some have a turntable, some don't. I do think kind of like the mindset should be and I think is the same as we continue to have these talks with groups which is like, yes, we're trying to get consistency, but also like we're trying to get our cars up on our like simple things, like we're trying to get our cars on our up on our website much faster and you guys don't know the delay in that. Right, like Kyle, you may have a DSLR camera and you go and you shoot a bunch of photos and, yeah, they're high res but they get compressed anyway when they go through the supply chain. But you're taking a bunch of pictures and you grab your SD card, you plug in your computer, you reorder the images, you send it to the feed provider, then the feed sends it to the, to the web, and then it's up on your website and it takes like 24 hours. So like, if you think about something as simple as Paul, you sell 100 cars a month and you shoot your cars and you may have a consistent process, but it's just photos, but every single car takes a day to get up on your website. Imagine the power of not only just having photos but a 360, but getting that car up on your website in 15 minutes instead of a day. If you're selling 100 cars, theoretically you're gaining 100 days of exposure just by, you know, not having to go through all this like latent, like feed to web, web to to being displayed to the user.

Paul J Daly: 12:44

That's an interesting way to think about days of exposure.

Art Dessein: 12:46

Yeah, so there's a lot of like small operational efficiencies that in in isolated, like in a vacuum, seem unimportant but collectively have a huge impact on on the stores operations.

Michael Cirillo: 13:01

You think of the collateral impact of that alone. You know we're talking about speed to market. The slower it takes them to merge the vehicle and get it online means they're going to be even slower syndicating that vehicle out across the web, limiting their ability to market it. And by the time that life cycle happens, the vehicle's already 30 days old.

Art Dessein: 13:21

Yeah, I mean every day.

Kyle Mountsier: 13:22

That happens all the time? Yeah, absolutely. Now, the other thing that I think is really cool about because you've had to build a sales team from zero to however many sales people you guys have running around the country right now which is, like a lot of times, I think, in in auto, people are like oh, sales in SaaS is different than sales in, you know, in a dealership and and all that type of stuff. But building a sales organization is is a unique thing. It requires, like, not just people management but process management and also, you know, like understanding of product knowledge and all that. What have been like some of the key moments along the way of you building from maybe just you, you and the guys and now it's like an entire team? What have been some of the key moments that you've seen that have really helped you build the right way to scale the sales side of the organization?

Art Dessein: 14:17

Yeah, that's a good question. Yeah, sales is definitely hard, right, like people always underestimate, like they have a great product and they can't get it to market. It's because sales is really really difficult. I think process is still really really hard for us. Like simple stuff, like so we present AI to a lot of like dealership groups and it's all about process and improving the process and putting AI and like their workflows to improve you know their day-to-day responsibilities and making more efficient. And some of the things that we say is like look, they're not great at using the CRM, as it is right, like most salespeople at a dealership may not be great at using this. It's the same with us. Like, and I think like, even though we have and we don't have anything else right Universal gosh, I got it's universal. Now we're that's a huge focus. Like you're taking one of the some key moments, like I think now, as of like probably 16 months ago, we've had a big push in doing the fundamentals really, really right, because that prevents you from scaling to the next level. But like even Salesforce entries like a painful process to get people to adopt. I think like going from you know, five sales reps where you have, like a individual relationship and you're on a first name basis. You get invited to their weddings. It's super easy. They can come to your house to having again. We don't have that many sales reps. I think we're relatively disciplined about hiring. We have, I think, 20 sales reps maybe, and none of them are like full cycle sales reps. But it becomes like I think a key challenge is like how do you maintain like the same startup, like I know Kyle, I know Paul, I know Michael, the same way that when you have 20 people, which is much harder, what's it becoming even harder as you have this working from home thing, which here we do, like three days in the office you can select two days to work from home. But then we got a lot of remote people and if you think about the products we offer, we have merchandising, your 360 or feature tour, your virtual booth, some of the computer vision, background removal stuff, ai for variable for sales and all these little things that chat. Now it's a lot of content to be able to train somebody on remote. So we're going through that learning stage of like how do we properly onboard these people that are not in the office? Because a lot of the learning from sales, as you all know, is like biosmosis, Like you're sitting next to someone, you get feedback, you're listening to their call, you understand how they're framing it and positioning it, you're getting direct feedback, like the kid touching the stove will never touch the stove type of analogy. And that's the best way for them to. Instead of you telling him 20 times not to do it, let him do it and then he'll get immediate feedback. And that's how you learn how to drive so quickly. You turn the steering wheel left, the car goes left and then you know not to do it. You miss that when you're remote. Like that doesn't exist. So like the that's wild the curves, the learning curves, and like the onboarding is much faster. So what for us? What used to take three months to be able to get a rep to do okay, now take some eight months.

Michael Cirillo: 17:24

So wow, how many of regular life. So here's the preface to the question. You're a sales professional. You know, whether we talk to sales professionals or medical professionals, or BDC professionals or dental professionals or car, everybody looks at life through the bias of their profession, I find. So my question to you is how many of life's challenges do you think could be easily solved if there was just some salesmanship involved? Like you brought up a wedding before, do you go to people's weddings, be like you could have totally had more people at this wedding if you just oh, definitely yeah, oh, it's funny.

Art Dessein: 18:02

I just said this discussion because one of our new sales reps is getting married next week and she just started three weeks ago, and I'm joking. I'm like you didn't even invite us. You should just create a table for eight people and then this discussion. I'm like your invitation should be based on how much you think that person's gonna give you, because if you break even oh, he's like let's build a probability matrix.

Paul J Daly: 18:26

We're gonna wait each of these invitations.

Kyle Mountsier: 18:29

He's like this person makes half a million, this person makes 50 grand. They're out.

Art Dessein: 18:34

No, but what you tend to find is that people who make a lot of money are actually the cheapest. And giving gifts or weddings, that's what I tend to find. My light went out, but I just said that discussion. So, yeah, I actually want that, because you know, I bring up the medical professionals because they would be like you know why more people aren't at this wedding?

Michael Cirillo: 18:52

Because they have fatty liver. You know it's like there's always like an answer through the bias. So, like what's another thing that you Like? Because I know I do this all the time. I'm like, oh, I could totally turn this struggling business around. Their marketing sucks.

Art Dessein: 19:06

Oh, I did restaurants. Oh, like restaurants, flights, you know, like how people board here's one thing that how is that? Not fixed yet. Yeah, like how people merge and on the highway you know they think you're polite by merging early when they're when they're not designed for that Right. It's literally the in Europe. If you've traveled to Europe and there's like the merge, by the way, is not like this long half mile, it like ends, and you and they go all the way to the end. They merge right, the zipper tactic. And here they're. They don't do it, they actually get mad at you. I'm sure you guys have experienced this. We're going all the way to the end of the merge and then they pull in front of you.

Michael Cirillo: 19:43

Right like 43 miles an hour, and it should be 70.

Art Dessein: 19:46

Oh, pass me and they pull in front of you when actually it's the most inefficient way to merge is like doing it early but they're thinking it's polite but it's actually impolite because you're actually causing like much thicker delays we need a sales and marketing campaign and indoctrinating people about their stupidity. I mean, if you guys, you guys all travel a lot like that is the most yeah, that you know what I thought was really interesting.

Michael Cirillo: 20:10

So I grew growing up in Canada. The propaganda around speeding Obviously like we get it, it's unsafe. This is the next thing.

Art Dessein: 20:18

the propaganda around speeding Okay.

Michael Cirillo: 20:20

The speed limit is, you know, 60 miles an hour and the number of people that go, oh my gosh, I'm doing 75. We're totally going to die in a car wreck and they, you know, quickly. And then, and then I go to Europe, to your point. I go to Germany and I'm in an event there and I'm in a little I don't even know what this thing is a fiat 500 with my wife and we're on the Autobahn going 227 kilometers an hour and an elderly couple passes us doing what seems like 300 kilometers, not having a leisure conversation, like no problem. And I found it fascinating through the lens of, if you just remove that thing, that speed limit, that at all of a sudden feels incredibly safe.

Paul J Daly: 21:06

Yeah, they don't even need hospitals at the auto on the Autobahn.

Michael Cirillo: 21:09

They just right to right to the mortuary. People know how to merge to the airport. Maybe we just need to remove speed limits and people will be forced to merge properly.

Paul J Daly: 21:19

Yeah, how to merge properly. Gosh, I bet if we just sat here for longer which we don't have the time today but we could probably identify three to five places in automotive where the merge quote unquote is inefficient. Right, we're trying out. Absolutely, we're going to unpack that, but we're out of time for today. Art, thank you so much for spending some time and just kind of like pondering some of these things and sharing your insights about what you're doing and what the?

Art Dessein: 21:44

industry is wrestling over, of course, any time. Thank you for having me.

Paul J Daly: 21:51

Do you still have that coffee table? I absolutely still have the coffee table.

Michael Cirillo: 21:57

And you know, earlier you said that you guessed this is the one we bought. Is it? Was that because you were still being climatized to your wife's taste in furniture, or what?

Paul J Daly: 22:12

No, it's like I know. I mean I just, you know, I just showed up and my wife bought something off Craigslist and I was like hey, whatever it is, that's what we bought. And so, like I knew it was a coffee table and it was sitting there like kind of near the door. So it was, like you know, like the first time you see that new puppy, right Like it looks up at you and you're like I guess you're part of the family now.

Michael Cirillo: 22:34

Are you one of those kinds of people that place human emotion on an am and no?

Paul J Daly: 22:37

Definitely do. I, definitely do not, I mean.

Kyle Mountsier: 22:41

I am still surprised because of the way that art is just so attuned to sales. Like I love his mentality of the wedding and he's like oh yeah, I was totally talking to someone about that the other day.

Paul J Daly: 22:52

I'm surprised he wasn't like question you. Here's the coffee table.

Kyle Mountsier: 22:55

Oh, and also let me sell you these three other things.

Paul J Daly: 22:56

Yeah, you're here, you know like he is just tuned in and I think you know you think in a way that you're not.

Kyle Mountsier: 23:02

You're thinking about like if, if, if he's thinking about that of a wedding of one of his people, he's probably just thinking about the way I, like I. The reason I asked him that question about sales is I do think we we don't cross pollinate like how to sell things from industry, partner and dealer and vice versa, Like it's almost like two totally different roadmaps.

Paul J Daly: 23:25

Sales Insight it totally is.

Kyle Mountsier: 23:28

Yeah, and I think we have a lot to learn both ways. Right, Because there are things that dealers execute really well on and there are things that industry partners and SaaS companies execute really well on in the sales engagement, and I think we need to respect each other in those and also learn from each other, right, Like follow up patterns or the way that we acquire leads or anything like that. Like, I mean, I remember so many companies it's like oh no, you should, you should do your website, like this, right. And then it's like you go to their website and it's like and you don't why yeah?

Michael Cirillo: 24:02

You know what it is always.

Paul J Daly: 24:03

Yeah.

Michael Cirillo: 24:05

It underscores, for me too, the the simple point that both of your first impressions of art is that he naturally abides by it, like it's become natural motor, motor skill. For him, the first rule of sales, which is sell yourself. You know what I mean. Like he's a galvanizer, which is like he pulls people in right. He immediately sells you a coffee table on Craigslist and he's like just this natural instinct to be like Nope, I need to deepen the relationship with this person that's transacting with me, or else it's not a legitimate transaction, and that's something that we tend to forget about. We're like oh, what about the word tracks? What about the negotiation tips? What if I had a script in front of my BDC? It's like no, the first rule of selling anything is to sell yourself, and it's so clear that that's exactly what art does.

Paul J Daly: 24:54

Absolutely. I don't think we can end that any better way. Thank you for spending a few minutes with us today. On behalf of Kyle Mount Sear, michael Cerillo and myself, thank you for listening to auto collapse.

Kyle Mountsier: 25:08

It's a big, big, big, big Wow.

Paul J Daly: 25:13

Actually any was pretty good.

Kyle Mountsier: 25:23

Welcome to auto collapse we recording.

Paul J Daly: 25:28

We're rolling.

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