The When, Why and How of Marketing with Steve DeWitt

Paul J Daly: 0:00

Jordan, you don't look anything like Michael Cirillo.

‍Speaker 2: 0:08

This is auto collabs.

Jordan Cox: 0:11

I don't. I got a little bit more sound like him either.

Kyle Mountsier: 0:14

What are you doing?

Jordan Cox: 0:15

I got a little bit lower voice or a little bit higher voice, not as low as his, yeah yeah, more hair, sunglasses, higher voice.

Paul J Daly: 0:21

You laugh?

Jordan Cox: 0:22

more than he does. A weird cackle.

Paul J Daly: 0:24

A weird cackle. Well, I mean, look, it's always nice to have you sit in for for MC, because you know we get sick of him. Him and all of his deep, insightful questions making us think about the real meaning of life, blah blah, blah, blah blah.

Kyle Mountsier: 0:39

That's right, whatever, hey, we're not talking about the meaning of life today, although we may. Who?

Speaker 2: 0:46

knows.

Kyle Mountsier: 0:47

You never know what we're going to get into here on auto collabs. But we've got Steve DeWitt, vp of sales with Automotive Mastermind, and I don't Do you guys know a lot about Steve. Nope, I think I met him one time.

Paul J Daly: 0:59

That's one of the things I love about the show when we get to spend some time with someone we don't know, like I love. I love hanging with the people we know and we love them. You know, because you kind of start jabbing and doing that. But it's the new folks that I think are really great and if we don't know them, there's a good chance that a lot of you don't know them as well, which is part of the, you know, part of the point of this show how can we introduce more people to other great people so that you can work together. It's called auto collabs for reasons. So we hope that, whether you're meeting him for the first time or if you already know him, you get to enjoy this interview with Steve DeWitt.

Kyle Mountsier: 1:38

All right, we're hanging out with Steve. Steve DeWitt, thanks for joining us here on auto collabs today. Man, I'm super excited to be here. Good, good, awesome, okay, track with me. I'm basically the only thing I know about you is I know from LinkedIn, so I need to know more from you because it's a whole bunch of been in auto for a very long time not just in auto.

Paul J Daly: 2:00

It's like being like running things at stores running things in auto at stores.

Kyle Mountsier: 2:08

You have a deep history on the retail side of the business. Talk to us a little bit about what your retail experience is in auto at this point.

Steve Dewitt: 2:17

Yeah, you know, got into auto in the early nineties. I was part of those conversations in the early days of hey, what if we should start an internet department? Like you know, like these kinds of conversations in my, at my GM at the time was like what's the internet? We don't need one of those. Like what are you talking?

Paul J Daly: 2:33

about.

Steve Dewitt: 2:33

Right. So I aged myself there a little bit but was in the business for about 23 years 15 of those like GSM or GM kind of roles at big, big stores here in Dallas. So you know, what's interesting is a lot of times people are like what's like? Why'd you get in the car business? And it was really and not to steal y'all's tagline about people. But I, when I first got in the car business, everyone around me tried to keep me dumb, Cause they didn't want me to take their job or to learn whatever. And I was one of those guys where I want everyone around me better and I want to. I want to have a deep bench, because if I got to tap someone on the shoulder and have the next man up philosophy, I want to. I want to show them what it's like. So now, all these guys and girls that used to sell cars from your running dealerships and it makes me so proud because I was able to pour into so many people in those 23 years. And I and you know the auto is a small world anyway, right, so you never burn bridges and you try to bring everyone around you better and up. So that's why I love y'all's tagline so much Cause. It is about the people for sure.

Paul J Daly: 3:40

Yeah, I mean we got to pass that credit over to Liza Borsches because she's the one that came up with it. I was just like we're going to put that on a T-shirt and she was like fine, and then we just carry it forward. She's awesome. But when you got in you said like everyone was had this very, this mentality of very like protectionism. Who was it in your career that like kind of saw your motivation and your talent and kind of gave you the hand up, said let me show you, let me show you the path.

Steve Dewitt: 4:07

Yeah, it was kind of interesting Cause when I finally got into finance and I was doing a really good job in finance if you're really good at it, you can get stuck there right and I had bigger aspirations and things I wanted to do. And I had a new car sales director at the time and she's like hey, you know, I want you on the sales desk, I want you to desk deals, I want you to do all that. But I got to find someone to replace you with that can do the same thing you've been doing. That's been so, you know. You know, did I lose you guys?

Kyle Mountsier: 4:39

Almost you're there.

Steve Dewitt: 4:40

Did I lose you or no? No, we're good, you're good so, um. So she gave me. She gave me my first chance. She's like hey, if you can find me someone that can do what you've been doing, I'll give you your first opportunity on the new car desk. And so she did it. And when I got up there, that's where I started seeing the. There's so many people that don't want to teach you anything, and I was like I'm going to, I'm going to flip the script, I'm going to be an open book, I'm going to teach you everything I can, because I want my job to be easier, because I'm not going to get to where we're not going to grow this place to where it needs to be If I'm the one trying to control everything.

Kyle Mountsier: 5:14

Yep, that's. I mean, that's such a. It's so interesting because I think and I don't think this is just auto there's this desire to exercise a level of control and leadership, because then there's ownership. Then there's like the ability to know what's going on, the ability to execute based on your specific desires and what that actually like. There's a good nature to that, but what it actually does is actually not enable the rest of your team to be great at what they do. We talk about this all the time. Actually just the access to information in auto, just that, not alone, let alone like talking about the profit margins or how you read a statement and training someone under you or anything like that, but just the access to information about what's going on in the industry, what's happening right now, so that you can be better prepared for your job. It's so hard to get that pressed down into organizations. Why do you think that is like? What's the why? Why do people that are in leadership in management is specifically, we'll go specifically auto, even though I think it's like a universal truth. Why do you think that kind of like is the barrier?

Steve Dewitt: 6:21

I think it's because a little bit of the all you know is all you know. And if you came up that way then and you saw someone that you thought was successful running a dealership and you saw the way they did it, you're like, oh well, that's what success looks like. I've got to do it that same way and you have to, you know, kind of pioneer your own path, because that's not it could. They could even be even more successful if they empower their people and did these kind of things. So I think there's a lot of you know, we've always done it that way and I think that's part of the epidemic, and automotive, to a certain degree, is you got to continue to evolve or you're going to die if you're not growing your diet Right. So you see a little bit of that today.

Paul J Daly: 7:03

How does that, how does that mentality like kind of translate into like this point in your career? Obviously, you look back through your LinkedIn profile and you'll see general sales manager, sales manager right. Director of sales right In store store, store store. You flipped over to the industry partner side. Tell us about why you made that move and like how you see things now from being on the other side of the table.

Steve Dewitt: 7:25

Yeah. So I was at one of those moments where I was like, hey, do I want to keep chasing my dream of owning a dealership or do I want to grow even a whole new base of people? And I made the conscious decision to go over to the vendor software side and be an individual contributor, just because I wanted to see one. If I could do it right, I thought I could, I could challenge, yeah, could I do it. And at the time when I went to work for the company, they had never hired someone that didn't have software sales experience, right. And I'm like, yeah, but the person we're selling to, the persona we sell to, is the guy I was for 20 years. If anyone understands that persona and what they need and what they desire, it's me. So give me a chance. And so that's what I got into. And I wanted to run a team again, because when you ran stores with 150 to 180 employees and then you're one guy in a car, you're not using all your skill sets, right. So I quickly became a director and was running the West Coast team of seven people, and then now I'm the VP of sales and I've got 42 people that roll up to me or whatever, and that's what I love. I love running teams, I love guiding and leading teams and really inspiring the next level. Like we promote a lot of people from within and I promoted six people this year into new hire roles, which created some gaps and some vacancies, but it was the right thing to do for the person and so we said, hey, it's going to give us some pain in the short term, but longterm I know I've got the right people doing what they need to do.

Paul J Daly: 9:07

Do you get to go into stores much anymore?

Steve Dewitt: 9:10

I go into stores a lot not as much as I did initially when I was out selling the product and those kinds of things. Now I'm in more of like group meetings and those kinds of things, but if the people want to meet with me, then I'm definitely going to be there. I still travel a ton, and the one thing that's been surprising to me in this role is I was at a Toyota store for a long time, as you guys saw on my LinkedIn, and so I used to look at stores that were ahead of me on the leaderboard and I'd be like man, those guys are really sharp. They're probably like I'd love to see that store because they're cool what are they doing. Yeah, what are they doing that I'm not doing? And then, in this role, I've been into some of those stores and I'm like they're doing the same stuff I was doing. They're not doing anything you need. Well, what's the differentiator then? I think the differentiator is market, right, there's definitely some metros and stuff that are obviously easier than others, or whatever. And then there's people that once you build this brand and everyone around you knows what you are and how you're doing it and everything else, because you can't outspend negative words, right, but you can definitely, once you've built such a reputation or brand, you can crush it. And so I'd get out there and I'm like they have just as many little lacks in their processes that I had. They just have done a better job at this, this or this right. So that was very eye-opening for me, because I used to put some of those people on pedestals and go man, one of the day I want to be like that, right what's the magic wand back there right. Yeah, like it's the same thing. They're just. You know, maybe they've been doing it longer, maybe they've got a better team, like whatever, but it was eye-opening for sure.

Kyle Mountsier: 10:51

What do you think it is? It's interesting, like, especially as I've, because I, you know, over the last couple of years I've been on the industry partner media side and you look around and like Industry problems are fairly universal, right, Everybody deals with them in slightly different ways, but I've got relationships with people at public groups that are literally dealing with the same exact problem as single rooftops right now, right, and that's like I would have never thought that. I was like oh, they probably have that knocked out at the big group. They blew past that a long time ago, figured it out, but it's really not the case, and you get to see that firsthand Because a technology automotive mastermind is really something that is so localized it's like it's meant for a dealer or small to really own their customer database, and so it's always all the same problem that we're dealing with doing that. What are some of the key problems that you're finding right now that dealers are having to deal with because of the way that your technology approaches the store or the customer?

Steve Dewitt: 12:05

Yeah, I think there's this big desire right now to connect as many communication paths as you can, right, because every consumer in America would say, hey, if they could communicate more effectively with me, I'd be happy about it. Right, but not knowing what the left and right hand are doing is not what they're looking for. And so, as you connect more and more platforms together in different ways, so everyone's talking and everyone's integrating. That's the win right now, and it's exciting to see automotive headed that direction. And you think of first party data being so important, but the hygiene of that data is just as important. And then, hey, if they do this over here, I need to maybe do something different over there. Right, and connecting all of that is something we haven't had for a long time, because things don't talk. And next thing, you know, as things start talking, it's going to be a better experience for the consumer, but it's also going to be really good for the dealer, because their customers are going to be more satisfied. It's a better experience and it makes sense. I think when digital retailing first started, there was a lot of dealerships that would a customer would start the journey online, start the transaction process, if you will, and they'd go into the store and the dealership would make them go back to step one right.

Kyle Mountsier: 13:25

Which always used to drive me crazy, right when DR started, you mean like yesterday.

Paul J Daly: 13:31

I knew it was coming.

Steve Dewitt: 13:35

So I think that's the thing as an example, even a mastermind, like some of the conversations we're having is, once a lead comes in a form lead, if you will should our marketing stop right, like, is it something where we've been proactive and we got the customer into a conversation, but now we're looking at all the different data sets that we have. If Kyle sends in a lead now and now the internet department's talking to him, our external marketing that's helped them get to that point should probably turn off right, unless something stalls or drags out or whatever. And when we figure that out in automotive, then that's where it's going to be a whole new thing. Right, because first party data is really important. Third party data, as we know, is going further and further away, and I think about the other day I was reading an article about people not answering their phone anymore, right, and when I was in the dealership.

Paul J Daly: 14:31

I was in the last time I answered my phone. Good night.

Steve Dewitt: 14:34

I was hammering the phones right for customers, and if you can connect all of that and get a better customer experience, that's all just where it needs to be.

Paul J Daly: 14:46

So what do you think is the biggest misconception that dealers tend to have? Like, as you're in and out of stores, as you're on calls, you're interacting with your sales team. What do a lot of people have wrong about this new approach, like, what's the top one?

Steve Dewitt: 15:04

I think the top one is they feel and this may sound a little weird, I guess but they feel like everyone wants their data to be very private. But I think what consumers really want is, if you're going to use the data the right way, to make a better wait. Let me clarify that for a second.

Paul J Daly: 15:18

You're saying you feel like dealers. Their perception is that the customers are very concerned about their data being private. Is that we're saying?

Steve Dewitt: 15:27

I'm saying that that dealerships Don't maybe connect all the time, that customers are just looking for a better experience, and you know the old phone call of hey, kyle, I want to buy your car. Oh, by the way, what is it like? Like, those kind of things are just bad things and I don't know about you guys. But if, if someone served me up an ad that was appropriate and made sense, I'm all in, like I was just thinking, hey, I don't like my TV downstairs. If someone would serve me up a really good deal right now in an ad I'm thinking about buying a TV it probably would make a lot of sense.

Kyle Mountsier: 16:02

Do you think that's because you're in sales and marketing? I don't know, I'm just throwing devil's head?

Paul J Daly: 16:07

I don't think so. I'm the same way.

Kyle Mountsier: 16:09

I've just never asked this question. I'm the same way. I'm like cross app, track me. No, my dad, you already have it all anyway. Yeah, just have it. Just make sure that when you talk to me it's the right thing, right? But like we're not getting that. We're seemingly not getting that from mass media. So I wonder if anyone's actually done any studies on like hey.

Paul J Daly: 16:31

What do actually feels that way?

Kyle Mountsier: 16:33

who feels what which way? I don't know it's the same thing.

Steve Dewitt: 16:37

It's the same thing of people email me all the time on LinkedIn trying to say hey, steve, you're the VP of sales, a mastermind. We'd like to help you do this, this or this. How would you like for me to follow up? And I may say, hey, emails best and they'll call me. I'm like you just asked me how to follow up email, phone call or LinkedIn message. I said an email would be great and then you call me. Like what are we doing there?

Kyle Mountsier: 17:00

I and it's like For years in auto we're like Thank goodness we can finally talk to people. And then it was like talk to him, or we talked to him or no. You got to talk to him or add more, call him more, talk to him more, send him birthday email, send them all this type of stuff. And it's like in the OEM is talking to him and the dealers talking to him, and then the marketing thing is talking into him and then something out the lead comes in and they're talking to him. And there's this. We've now got a kind of like peel back the onion to say, all right, what is the communication that we actually have to have right now and what's the one thing that we can communicate with them? But that's a it's a big ask, because there's a lot of peels on the onion right now.

Steve Dewitt: 17:49

Yeah, I feel like well, I think you know. I think that's the key, though, right when he was talking about what's the biggest misconception of dealers. It's like they they want a phone call when they should get a phone call and not when they shouldn't right, right.

Paul J Daly: 18:01

Why don't we talk to him? And why are we talking to him right now?

Steve Dewitt: 18:04

Yeah, like the why, like the why and how, like why should we talk to him? When should we talk to him and how should we talk to him Is the most prevalent right now that it's ever been. But we haven't figured it out right. So as we get better at that, then I think that's where the key is. But I think the misconception is I mean, a lot of it Is just what you have. Right, if you go into your CRM and this is your work plan and you're calling your calls and there's not a lot of outside data power in that you're just going through your list, but that doesn't mean you should call them and it doesn't mean that it's a good use of your time or the consumer's time, right. So that's kind of the the when, the why and the how are very important.

Kyle Mountsier: 18:44

So what's like, what's a thing right now, the dealers going okay, no one's figured it out, no, and it's not working as there's still some can disconnected data. What kind of dealer deal go in right now into their organization, into their operations, and pick one thing out to just like Start to peel back the undue. How do they, how do you start?

Steve Dewitt: 19:04

I think the way you got to start more than anything is you can't just Just rely on DMS and CRM data, because it's very static, it's like a Polaroid. Like DMS data is whatever you did last time you were there. You may have moved since then. You may not even own the car anymore. Like that static data is. You need more. You need data that is constantly being hygiene and clean and whether that's using a CDP or a data lake or whatever you're doing, like that's the biggest thing. Like I don't know how many people I would call a day back when I was on the retail side that no longer own the car. I didn't know they no longer own the car because I didn't have any use of that. I didn't see the data Right and I probably could have called someone that did own the car that I needed to talk to, but I was spinning my wheels over here. So I think that's the piece of it for sure. Like, and the way that works is just making sure that whoever you're using integrates with everyone else, right, because if you have yeah, like everybody playing nice together.

Paul J Daly: 20:07

That's becoming more and more prevalent. When it doesn't happen and thankfully it seems like there's less and less tolerance for it, because as soon as we start to get more and more solutions that do like to play well with others, the tolerance for the people that don't is going to force the issue. And people need to play well together, which is, you know, collaboration. It's kind of in the DNA.

Steve Dewitt: 20:29

Yeah, I think of like form leads, right, if you? You know, if you send in a form lead and then you get 80 phone calls next time you're not putting a good phone number in, right? So-.

Paul J Daly: 20:39

Apps never right.

Steve Dewitt: 20:41

Yeah, we're creating our own junk, our own like Well, he's always kicking the can down, right, Not thinking of that way.

Paul J Daly: 20:47

Well, listen, this has been an awesome conversation, Steve. I love it when we have somebody that takes it from like coming up through the ranks in the stores to the industry partner side, because the level of understanding and empathy just goes through the roof. So thanks for joining us today on the show. It's been really great talking with you.

Steve Dewitt: 21:05

Yeah, thank you guys for inviting me. Super, super fun, and it's always great to talk to you.

Paul J Daly: 21:14

You know there's a common theme when we talk to people that are paying attention to the broader industry and the broader dynamics of what it takes to run a business, run a dealership, serve customers. Is that empowering employees tends to be a common theme.

Kyle Mountsier: 21:30

Yeah like that's the way to grow in whatever industry, whatever part of our industry Is. Grow by empowering others, like bring others along, and him doing that when he was in the dealership, but also in his current role. You know it's that's what I love. A lot of times people will be like, ah dealers, ah vendors, either side of the road, but there's so much of the same dynamics in each side of the industry.

Paul J Daly: 22:00

Jordan, it's your turn to say something. Michael Cirillo just usually butts in four times by now. It just happens he's just being so polite.

Jordan Cox: 22:08

Politeness, right? No, one of the things that Steve mentioned was that when he was in a role like in finance was he couldn't get promoted because he was so good at his job. There's two parts in that dynamic. Is you either get promoted to a job you're not good at or you get stuck in a job that you're really good at. So again, there's a couple sides of that. But his view and his focus on really empowering the rest of his team and helping other people get to the same level as him so that he could have store-wide successes really something I took away from that. I don't know, I just love the people side of it and the team dynamic Always.

Kyle Mountsier: 22:42

Yeah, and I have to. If I would be remiss if, right now in the, what our industry is talking about, if I didn't recap the fact that so many people are talking about what leveraging data does to serve customers better and how do we take all of this rich data that we have just in silos and bring it to a place where customers can feel more cared for and employees can feel more equipped to take to do that care. That's, I think, if collaboration the thing that we were talking about at the beginning of the show means anything in the next 12 months, and we're heading quickly to NADA. If there's anything that comes out of this, I hope that it's. You know, yes, we're gonna introduce AI and CDPs and we're gonna get better attribution and all that right. But if collaboration means bringing together disconnected data in order to empower employees to better care for customers, the industry will win.

Paul J Daly: 23:41

It's funny how the two things we're talking about, like you think, when you develop your team and you bring the people together, that those people are much more likely to play well with others and bring the data together those things are not disconnected, they're actually very connected. So we hope you enjoyed your time with us. This interview is so much fun for us. We can't wait to connect next time, probably at NAD is when we're gonna get to hang out with Steve a little bit. So, on behalf of Kyle Mountseer, jordan Cox are filling for the one and only Michael Cirillo. I'm Paul Jay Daly. We'll see you next time on AutoClebs.

Speaker 2: 24:15

Sign 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 aso2.com. That's ASOTUcom. 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 AutoClebs.

Paul J Daly: 24:50

We're recording. We're rolling.

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