The Impact of Aligning The Right Inventory With The Right Market with Susanna Cunningham

Paul J Daly: 0:00

Michael Cirillo, what is the first word that comes to your mind right now? Go Toto.

‍Unknown: 0:11

This is auto collabs,

Paul J Daly: 0:13

the band or the dog?

Michael Cirillo: 0:15

The band?

Paul J Daly: 0:16

Why?

Michael Cirillo: 0:17

Because our guest today is

Paul J Daly: 0:20

a guest relevant thought. That's amazing. Whoa,

Unknown: 0:23

and

Michael Cirillo: 0:24

I couldn't stop through, through seeing the calendar invite and seeing her name, Susanna, I couldn't stop singing the song Rosanna. And Rosanna is a song by Toto, and she works at automotive mastermind, right? And they're all big on data. And now all I'm singing is,

Unknown: 0:48

all I want to do when I wake up in the morning is analyze your data,

Michael Cirillo: 0:57

right? Wow, not Susanna, it's Rosanna, and I love the way you're learning its Toto.

Paul J Daly: 1:02

You would almost think that that was in any way, pre rehearsed, and it was not, I can vouch for it, literally, I hit record, and I asked Michael that question, I was gonna go like,

Kyle Mountsier: 1:13

I am speechless right now. This is on that was unbelievable. There is no other way that we can possibly continue this intro without just going we just really hope that you enjoy this interview that Cirillo just nailed the set. That's

Michael Cirillo: 1:34

an epic song, by the way.

Kyle Mountsier: 1:36

It's a great

Paul J Daly: 1:41

song. Susanna, it is such a pleasure to have you with us today. Welcome to auto collabs. Gosh,

Susanna Cunningham: 1:45

thank you so much for the invite. I appreciate it

Paul J Daly: 1:47

all right. So always, always, always, want to give a little background, especially to someone who's kind of new for our content community, right, which is one of the things that we love. It's like the lifeblood of asotu is new faces, new opinions, new histories. Tell us about how you got into the auto industry. Well,

Susanna Cunningham: 2:03

just like everybody else, you know, you had a plan A and A. Plan A didn't work, right? I haven't met anybody in my life where the auto industry has been the plan A.

Paul J Daly: 2:13

And maybe, if you're maybe if you're, like, the next generation of a dealer, that's about

Kyle Mountsier: 2:17

it. You gotta go. You gotta go meet some of these Northwood students. They're like, pumped.

Susanna Cunningham: 2:22

Listen, I'm in. I mean, my my bachelor's degree came from Liberty University, and it's an automotive dealership degree, specifically an automotive dealership, and that was with Hendrix. So that was the only time that it really opened my eyes that it could be a Plan A even though I believe it should be. So counting my gray hairs, I believe it's close to 20 years now in the auto industry. Started on the retail side. You know, you sell your soul to the devil a little bit. And what really made me want to leave retail was mostly I was missing choir practice on Thursday nights, and my mother in law was the organist, the pianist for the church, and I was the choir director, so the conversations on Sundays, you know, weren't always that great when you're missing choir practice and you're leading the choir. So that's

Kyle Mountsier: 3:09

the best one retail. It's not like, what hours were getting a little long or, you know, I really had a vision. It's like, mother in

Paul J Daly: 3:16

law on Sunday was wearing throwing shade on Sunday mornings showing

Michael Cirillo: 3:21

up for Sunday dinner, and she just look you walk through the door, yeah? Like, pass

Susanna Cunningham: 3:25

the potatoes, please.

Michael Cirillo: 3:28

Now sing it.

Susanna Cunningham: 3:32

So, yeah. So transition into an opportunity that was open with Cox automotive. So it was with Mannheim auto auctions. And, gosh, this is probably 2012 range, something like that. So I'm, yeah, very smart most of the time. And this is my business. You know, once I decided that I was go like it changed my life, and it's so easy for it to change others, right? So this is the only business that I'm aware of currently, maybe a real estate agent, but you don't have to be a slave to somebody else's possibilities. You know, I don't have you're not dictating my paycheck. What? Right? So, transition into Cox automotive. I wanted to stay in this business. So, you know, the industry this, this is my career. Been here. Gonna die here. I don't think I can ever leave to do anything different, like the conflict is fun, um, so Cox automotive had a position in my backyard with Anaheim auto auctions. Love used cars. 15 years old, I was at Beller auto auction buying my first car before I had a driver's license. So loving, loving it, right? Um,

Kyle Mountsier: 4:37

stop, because, okay, you told you said at the beginning of this that you, like, accidentally got in auto. You never dreamed of being in auto, but at 15, what prompted you, at 15 years of age, to be buying a car at an auto auction? Why did that happen? When yours, I feel like we're missing a whole portion you're trying to get to, like, why you're at Manheim? Do? I'm like, you're

Susanna Cunningham: 5:00

looking upon getting a driver's license, and then you look at the bicycle, and then you think of the possibilities of driver's license, and then you look back at the bicycle. I'm just saying, most everybody probably would have the inclination to go buy something. It's fair. My budget was around $500 so

Paul J Daly: 5:19

back to the bicycle, right?

Susanna Cunningham: 5:23

I mean, that's, that's kind of how it started. Gosh, yeah, so there's that. So Manheim auto auctions, kind of the funniest thing there. I'm sure there's talks on motive people, so, like, don't tell anybody. HR, might not be a thing anymore, but on the application to make it past the screening process to actually get the interview. Like, I knew I could do the job, but to get the interview, you had to have an associate's degree, and at the time, I didn't, so I may have, may have flubbed a little on that resume just to say that I had something that I didn't like. It's the car business, right? Like, you know, we all bring a little extra to the table. That was my extra Well, I

Paul J Daly: 6:04

didn't realize this was a tell all podcast, but let's take it. Ratings are about to go up. What else? Tell it. Tell us the other things that you flood.

Susanna Cunningham: 6:15

That was the biggest fun. I mean, I've made up 410 that's my master's degree on the wall. So I've made up for it, like

Paul J Daly: 6:21

we're all or is there you go. I can print one of those too. Oh,

Unknown: 6:26

my goodness, unbelievable.

Susanna Cunningham: 6:28

You know, fast forward, like automotive mastermind I was literally at the last stage of the interview. So this is 456, interviews later. I can't remember. And one of the questions was, you know, tell me something that you may regret, like, you know, or something, that you did that maybe was untoward. And I was like, Oh, Jesus, here we go. All right, well, I lied. So that's kind of how I started. I said, so technically I lied. I got the job, but I lied fixed my lie. We're all better. We're back, nice.

Kyle Mountsier: 6:57

So redemption on the I mean, my real question is, did

Paul J Daly: 7:00

you have an associate's degree when you got your bachelor's degree? Did you have a bachelor degree when you got your master's degree? Okay, just for the father.

Susanna Cunningham: 7:08

I had it all International Business Management, Automotive dealership management, MBA, boom. Made up for

Paul J Daly: 7:13

it in Spain. Did

Michael Cirillo: 7:14

you build those degrees in the time it took to do six interviews, automotive mastermind, say that interviews,

Susanna Cunningham: 7:22

the crazy thing with automotive mastermind was, mean, this is my space. Me my space and my LinkedIn was blowing up. You know, Cox automotive went through several transition periods. Through one of those transition periods, I wasn't with Cox automotive, and LinkedIn was blowing up. You know, Carfax, CarGurus, cars.com I'm in Northern Virginia now. I mean, who wouldn't want somebody with tenured experience on the corporate side in this just geographic right there market, right so automotive mastermind recruiter kept hitting me up, and I'm like, Listen, this is my space. I had never heard of you a day in my life. And I pride myself with being an industry expert here. Like, do you sing? Do you dance? What do you do? So that is how I first got introduced to automotive masterminds, was I had a demo. Like, you know, pretend on your client and give me a demo of your services.

Michael Cirillo: 8:14

Have you ever had a moment because, like you started with, you got in the same way all of us did, which is, was not our plan a Do you find yourself and maybe I'm exposed, this is my one thing that I'm sharing that nobody but to like, sometimes I'll just be like, driving, and I'll be like, I never thought I would work in the car business, let alone for 30, you know, 20 years, like, we're in it. This is it. Do you ever have moments like that where you're like, Oh, dang. I guess my career is in automotive,

Susanna Cunningham: 8:42

not not anymore. I mean, you know the alternative. So where I grew up, you know, low income area, your biggest income is, you know, Tyson's or Purdue chicken processing plants. You've got NASA, you've got school teachers, you have a hospital, you're a nurse. So looking at the options, you know, going to a bank with a business degree, somebody tells you what you're worth. You know, congratulations. This is going to be your chair perpetually, 45 hours a week, your only chair. You get a five minute, I don't know, smoke break or water cooler gossip. And we think you're worth approximately$50,000 plus your cost of living. I can't imagine a world where that exists. I I can't. Gosh, that actually hurts my heart. The thing that people live in environments, oh, man, they're told what they're worth.

Paul J Daly: 9:34

That's not what you're worth, it's what you're worth to them. To them, I think that's what

Michael Cirillo: 9:39

things more.

Kyle Mountsier: 9:41

Yeah, which one sings more? I It is interesting that, especially in this industry, for the large, a large portion of the industry, right the the portion of the industry that's been in fixed or variable ops, or has some sort of sales background, or has started. Something, you have the opportunity to kind of make your own way. And I think it's a really attractive part of our industry. There is, you know, Paul says a lot of times like, there's there's no ceiling, but there's also no floor, like the ground floor is the ground floor for getting in the industry, and there's no ceiling, like you can excel to the nth degree. You know, you look at so many people that you know, similar stories where it's like, you know, low income neighborhood owns 53 dealerships, right? And that's like, riddled through our industry. It's not like these one off cases. It's like, all over the place, right? Immigrant owns dealerships, all of, all of those types of things come to play. So I love, I love the story of that. So I want to know when you took that demo of automotive mastermind, since it was kind of like a, I don't know, you know who you are, what you're doing, when, what was the point where you were like, Huh? This is something I'm interested in. Was there like a trigger about the product or the person that you were talking to, or anything like that, that kind of led you to go, this is different? Yeah, no, that's

Susanna Cunningham: 11:11

a great question. Firstly, it's the data, the power that they have. So you've got this German owners coming to the United States, working for Mercedes Benz, and saying, This can't be the only way that we can keep our loyalty database. You. Fast forward to this garage idea, this crazy garage startup idea, into what it became under IHS, you. Fast forward even further to now what it is under s, p. So from a data perspective, number one, the passion these people had to say, I think there's a better way of doing things and to run with it. To have the courage, oh my gosh, the courage it takes to have a crazy idea that could shake up the industry it did, to have the courage to take a U haul van to Las Vegas.

Paul J Daly: 11:58

Tell us more about that story real quick. What does that actually mean? Take a U haul Vegas,

Susanna Cunningham: 12:04

the first nada that our owners participated in. You know, it's year number one. You're a garage startup company. You've got a little bit of financial backing, you know, for Mercedes or what have you. However that came to be, they're literally driving a U haul cross country to set up for the first Nada with, you know, not much money, not much of a client, not much of a history, and trying to play with the big dogs. The courage

Unknown: 12:29

that's cool.

Kyle Mountsier: 12:30

That is OG. That's how super OG like throw it in the back of the U haul. We'll do it ourselves. Don't hire anyone. It

Susanna Cunningham: 12:38

just blew me away. Everybody cared about your success, and when you're working at a car dealership, that's very hard to find. When you're sitting in retail, it's hard to find managers that believe in you or help push you to what your your best person could look like. They see something in you you don't see yourselves at this company, the ego gets set completely aside, and it doesn't matter who you are in this company. You can be the IT folks. You can be our product team. You can be in the office in India or the office in Poland, Canada. Doesn't matter. There's somebody here to lift you up if you ever trip and fall. And I felt that throughout the entire presentation. And I'm a dork, um, and I like the data side. I like to tell stories. And this company, I mean, I'm in dealerships almost every single day, and now working in the Northeast region with dealer groups, and I get to look at the big picture from a data perspective and roll up my sleeve and make real recommendations on spending money or driving success and doing things as small as you know, looking at a 10 car salesperson over at BMW of Starling, working with them one on one, because they weren't getting the help from managers. They just swallowed in the crowd of what a large organization looks like, and doing weekly one to ones with a salesperson, and now she's selling an average of 30 cars a month, or taking a receptionist at an Audi store, and she knew she could be more than receptionist. Well, with automotive mastermind, I can take my time and grow that person to her career where she is today, and it's no other company gives you that bandwidth, not any company that I know.

Paul J Daly: 14:15

I mean, it sounds like you're really into the people side of the business, right? Like everything you've said kind of from the beginning ties back to the fact, even from your own story, that you're able to help people move forward and even, like, help dealers help other people. It sounds like that's at the center. So like, I feel like you need one of these shirts.

Susanna Cunningham: 14:35

I might have one of those shirts, yes, but I'm representing automotive mastermind today. So this

Paul J Daly: 14:43

represents all of us,

Susanna Cunningham: 14:48

just out of curiosity, such an awful reputation. But, I mean, one of my, my buddies, I don't know if you could see it, but you know, fuel and faith. Fuel and faith an automotive ministry. He's sitting at a car dealership, and one. Working through an automotive ministry to help the community, you know, building backpacks for schools, for underprivileged school systems. And, I mean, what an industry.

Paul J Daly: 15:10

We agree.

Unknown: 15:12

Michael, you're gonna,

Michael Cirillo: 15:13

I don't want to ask it anymore after that one, yeah. How do you top that? That's amazing. No, that's, this is good. I

Susanna Cunningham: 15:20

tend to get on a soapbox, and sometimes I snap and point. So, no, I like

Kyle Mountsier: 15:25

it as you wag the finger. So what exactly is that, is that company doing? You said it was, it's which org is backing it. So

Susanna Cunningham: 15:35

it's one of my friends that works over for a Lithia or BMW store in my backyard. It's actually the larger group is with Lithia, and the whole vision he has is just bringing faith into this environment where, you know, people would rather get a root canal than go buy a car. I mean, we all know that. We've known it for years, but just putting a humanizing spin on this industry and collaborating with like minded people and just showing them that there's, there's a better way to be a human, there's a better way to have life. And you know, they schedule auto rallies to raise money to do trunk or treat and provide back to the community.

Paul J Daly: 16:10

What do you mean an auto rally? What's an auto rally?

Susanna Cunningham: 16:13

So imagine like minded people that like cars, right? So let's start there, car people, car people. And maybe they like to drive fast, you know, maybe they do. Maybe they don't, like, just depends on the kind of rally we're going for. But they actually schedule different like, I don't know, like, there's different kinds like, you know, maybe there's a classic cub club, maybe there's a Porsche club, but they go, you know, essentially collecting people, like, drive through the different areas of communities, picking up school supplies, donation supplies, was most recently. And then, you know, holding up in a parking lot somewhere, and stuffing the backpacks together, praying together and giving it back to the community.

Unknown: 16:52

I mean, yeah,

Paul J Daly: 16:54

these always go. These always go in a direction. I didn't expect these great. So I know, I know. So obviously, we talk a lot about the people side of the business. We're all big advocates of the the community involvement, the focus on people. We want to highlight that as much as we can. Let's get practical for a second. You know, you get, you get the opportunity to see a lot of data. And I think that's one advantage that a lot of our industry partners have is that they a dealer. Individual dealer might be limited to their own store, their group, their 20 group, right? Kind of a smaller circle. However, a lot of times, industry partners get to be in dozens or see things that are happening in hundreds of stores, so you're kind of in that seat. What do you feel like is one of the biggest opportunities that dealers might not be taking full advantage of, no matter what type of dealer they are. No, that's

Susanna Cunningham: 17:45

a great question. And I mean, I'm working on one right now. Actually, is a portfolio analysis, which seems very simple when you speak of it, but when you're looking at your retire to retire, you have a financial advisor, and that advisor, Sig makes suggestions on your entire portfolio well as car dealers, you know, sometimes we get stuck and we can't see the forest through the trees, and we forget about all of the resources around us and about industry professionals that work for the organizations that that they're paying for, the carfaxes of the world, the automotive masterminds, the you know, their OEM reps, etc. So the biggest pain point that I'm seeing where this becomes a helpful solution is, you know, I'm spending the same or more money than I was last year, two years, two months, six months, what have you pass point, my sales aren't getting any better. So, you know, my ROI is going down, my new car floor pendulum is expensive, right? So it's all the same. We're spending more money, we're seeing less results. Why or what? So I do, and from an analysis perspective, just something as simple as, you know, pulling CRM reports to look at your lead sources. So as an example, this dealership that I'm working with now, I'm actually putting together meeting information, what we looked at is proactive, which is automotive mastermind, versus is reactive, spend right? So you've got Carfax, you have car gurus. This dealer uses auto trader, and this dealer also uses cars.com So those four sources, so your your pain point is new car inventory, new car floor plan, not selling as many cars, but when we do an analysis of the leads that are coming into your system for $20,000 a month, or $25,000 a month, which is what the spend is on this bucket of reactive customers, 85% of the leads that get entered are pre owned leads. You're not solving the new car problem, right? So something as simple as that. Another thing, from a data perspective, is Census. I'm a dork. Genealogy, historical research. I look at census forms back to the early 1800s this particular dealer, new car problem, new car floor plan, cost. He's head. And tundras, sequoias, the big money. It's a Toyota store, the big money. But looking at a census information, his largest county and his DMA, firstly, the average age, the median age is 40, and the median household income is 88,000 so any 40 year old I know would love these cars, but based off of the median income of what you're servicing, they can't afford these cars

Kyle Mountsier: 20:25

buying inventory, right? Yeah? Either, either stocking the wrong inventory for the DMA, or have to start marketing outside of the dama in order to get those vehicles sold. Yeah?

Susanna Cunningham: 20:33

So fine. We find more expensive, higher hitting zip codes, where now we can maybe do a social media conquest campaign, right digital audience conquest campaign, to different zip codes to get rid of the heaviest things that are eating up your floor plan costs.

Kyle Mountsier: 20:49

Stellar. That right there. That's a nugget like, I think anybody can take away from like that is when Paul said, get practical. It's like, look at your inventory. Look at the target market audience. Like, where are you located? Does that inventory fit the market? Audience, can you sell that inventory to them? If yes, press in. If not, go elsewhere. Also restock based on known, known DMAs. Like, massive insight right there. Susanna, I just want to say like we went on a journey. We didn't we didn't even think we were gonna go on during this 20 minutes, found out that you actually were destined for auto because you had it. You were at an auction. You know, way earlier than maybe anybody else in the auto industry has been in. But we really appreciate you joining us today, giving us a little insight, giving us a little fun, laughing a little bit. Thanks for joining us. No

Susanna Cunningham: 21:43

problem. Thank you guys so much for the invite.

Paul J Daly: 21:49

Okay, coming out of the episode Kyle. What is the first word that comes to your mind?

Michael Cirillo: 21:55

Data, I

Kyle Mountsier: 21:56

don't know

Paul J Daly: 22:00

what reminds

Unknown: 22:01

me about right now. Data,

Paul J Daly: 22:03

fast websites. I always joke that, like fast websites and data, like, it's the meme where, you know, the guys hold hands with his girlfriend, and he looks back and he's looking at the other girl. It's like for Kyle, it's like, data,

Michael Cirillo: 22:16

tell me, like, tell me, there wasn't just all sorts of validation about what, what brought us all together? What brings the asotu verse all together? It's like none of us were like. None of our first words after being born were sell cars like this was not our plan a but what keeps her here, and what keeps us here is, I mean, she went on to share all these cool examples about how people in our industry go from nothing, acquire something, then use that something as a vehicle to bless others lives. Yes, and, and, I think that's the whole reason why all of us are in this industry. Why? Why? What holds us in

Paul J Daly: 23:02

all of us? Three, absolutely, yes. The people who wear these love people more than you love car shirts. Yes. And I think we're flushing out from the corners of the industry, all these people who are doing this already every day. It's not even like, I wish I could say that, like what we're doing is inspiring the majority of people to do it. But really what it's doing is drawing people in to the center, people who already do right?

Kyle Mountsier: 23:25

It's like, it's, it's everybody's been doing it without, like, the recognition, or without the understanding that the others are out there, right? That there's so many times we run into people and it's like, Wait, so you're telling me that they also and also and also them. That's amazing. I thought I was out here on an island trying this thing, and I think that it is. It's this beacon that says, like, here's and, you know what's crazy, you know, Paul, you and I talk about this all the time, and we're gonna, we're gonna run on this, probably this ending for a minute, because I'm pumped. But we go through every airport you wear that shirt and it's like, 678, people look at you and they just kind of, they like, nod, and they're like, or they're like, yeah. And this is a universal thing that I think people have to get called out into, and be called to to say, look, you can ex, you can, like, experience this in a network of people that believe the same thing. And that's what auto collabs, that's what more than cars, that's what a sodu con. That's what being around these other events, that's what all of the people that were that we're trying to call together, including Suzanne, are saying, like, Oh no, no, we're all the others, and we've found each other now. Yes, amazing. Oh,

Paul J Daly: 24:45

man, there's no better way than that. I think, I think that's that's it. We're all fired up, pumped, ready to run through a wall on behalf of Kyle mountsier, Michael Cirillo and myself, and his singing ability and his ability to bring today's guests and topics into a classic song by the band. Toto, thank you for listening to auto collabs. Sign

Unknown: 25:04

up for our free and fun to read daily email for a free shot of relevant news and automotive retail media and pop culture. You can get it now at asotu com. That's asotu com. If you love this podcast, please leave us a review and share it with a friend. Thanks again for listening. We'll see you next time. Welcome to ottaka Labs. You recording you.

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