Using Your Own Tech with Steve Roessler

Kyle Mountsier: 0:00So none of us really have this same problemUnknown: 0:08

this is auto collabs

Kyle Mountsier: 0:10

that Steve Roessler our guest today has and that problem is that we don't really ever have to worry about everyone show him. Show him your hair, everyone. Nope, none of that stuff going on Steve rustler better known as the hair of the industry is just got this like gorgeous and Main. It's all swept back all that.

Paul Daly: 0:30

I don't know, he and Frank Lopes, he loves have a bit of a rivalry going. And we did we did put this out to the public a couple years ago, we put a side by side and we're like, who does? Who don't? Who wears it better? Yeah, and they're different. Steve Rossler has the height and kind of the intensity. And Lopes is like always, like dialed in full are sophisticated. Yes.

Michael Cirillo: 0:52

White Card graphic with white close ups of their faces. And like, you know, we need to run that poll again, I think, like

Paul Daly: 0:59

Mortal Mortal Kombat style with the verses in between salutely

Kyle Mountsier: 1:03

Actually, I don't think we should do that at NADA. Like, it's like, we should have like a scale. And they should have to, like weigh themselves somehow with them without their hair or something like that.

Michael Cirillo: 1:13

Like, can we get those buttons like the public bathroom? Like so people can just like push about

Paul Daly: 1:19

the buttons? That'd be easy. Just net promoter. Would you recommend this hair? Yes or no? I think I think that I think the Steve Rossler and Frank Lopes. I think their hair weighs the same. Steve has like more hair. More hair. product, right? More hair more. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Right. Rose go with that. I mean, but you know, Steve's personality, the energy matches the hair. Yes. Right? Because he is always you watch him on social media. You watch him around people. And without a doubt. He is always engaged in the moment, which is one of the things I've really liked about being around him. Like, it's so genuine. And sometimes it's so outrageous, but it is so authentic every time and always.

Michael Cirillo: 1:59

I think about like, how far this industry has moved in. It's also like style and it's approach just in the last decade. I mean, 15 years ago, I was guys I'm not kidding you like three piece suit it up at everything I went to

Paul Daly: 2:15

there's a picture of that on your website. You look good. And by the way, you shot a nice suits,

Michael Cirillo: 2:20

but when I think about him, like he's brought this, like sense of comedy, and you know, quick wittedness and kind of not dressed down, but like a little bit more casual, which like softens the vibe. And, and, and I think about him in that regard, because like the industry as a whole I mean, like, look at us, I don't know, guys 15 years ago, if we showed up black ballcap black T shirts rolling into a conference wearing, you know, our our Nikes and whatever people would be like, What is this? And it still is that way in a lot of parts of the world. But Steve kind of bring Yeah, he he kind of brings the energy horses. Yeah, for sure.

Kyle Mountsier: 2:57

Well, hey, we hope that you enjoy our conversation with Steve Roessler of DriveCentric. All right, I am hanging out with my man Steve Roessler. The live with Dr. Guy, you know, that guy made the hair and live with Dr. Get live with Dr. You before we get started. You got to tell me like when did that because I know. Some people could think like, oh, well, everybody's been saying that for a long time. How did Live with Drive Come up? Where was the first time that someone said that?

Steve Roessler: 3:29

To that? I'll tell you what it was by accident, which I think the best ideas come up by accident. Yeah. But I would. Okay, so we were gosh, I was just getting in automotive and you know, launching stores or signing up stores. And I forget it was my buddy. Jimmy down in Chattanooga, Tennessee. And I said, I know integrate. Abul. Yeah, go figure. You're from Tennessee. So I would always be asking because I'm a one syllable type a guy. I like everything one syllable. So I would literally just be calling him up. And I probably said this subconsciously without even thinking about it. And I said to Jimmy, when are we going to go live with Drive And he said what you do with your voice just like that? Yeah, I'm um, I'm on the phone. Right? I'm like, Jimmy, when are we going to go live with Drive. You know, whatever. And, and he literally just said, What do you say? I said, What are you gonna go live with Drive? You know, go move forward, get the CRM, get DriveCentric What are we gonna go? You know, that's all I was saying. And he said, You just said there was gold. I'm like, what I just said, You've got to dry. I didn't even catch it. Yeah, I mean, I really didn't. And so some of the things that use go out there and as you you know, build a brand for yourself or, you know, you have a name you know, just you just come up with like these things, and we actually got that branded. We went out there and paid Do you have that trademarked trademark? Yeah, I love it. I mean, it was about two years ago, we got that trademark, and I would have never dreamed so I was like, Oh my gosh, one of my ideas were came up

Kyle Mountsier: 4:58

with that. All right. All right. So you said earlier you said when I got in automotive because DriveCentric is your introduction to automotive right. And so what what does your history of, of being in the career job world consist of?

Steve Roessler: 5:15

Oh, gosh, yeah. So I've been in, well, now three industries. So I graduated, I will try to keep it short. But I'm an engineer by degree. So I did engineering sales, I always knew I wanted to get sales, but I want to get technical. So I was I love math. So I tutored math all my life, but engineering was way to go, did all my you know, calc 1 2 3 differential equations, you had matrix theory, all that stuff. So once I graduated, I did that for five years. And then a buddy of mine because I moved to Evansville, Indiana, to take a job to be in the pharmaceutical world with, which was Jones pharmaceuticals here actually in St. Louis, for I got sold. But I got into medical industry then. And I did various jobs, you know, from pharmaceuticals, to surgery, to testing drugs, to, you know, sing just all sorts of crazy stuff in the medical world for 16 years. But a good eight of those years were startups. So I anyway, I got into the startup world, I got a taste of startups, I love the startup world. And then my neighbor, Dave, who worked for JM&A, and he said, Hey, man, I'm working on the CRM. And I want you to take a look at it, because you knew I love CRM, and I've been on a lot of CRMs and various industries. And anyway, I looked at it and it had video, and I just said, Dude, I could sell this in the medical industry. He goes, Well, how about you do it in automotive?

Kyle Mountsier: 6:40

Let's start with automotive then man. I'm just like,

Steve Roessler: 6:44

Are you kidding me? I could walk in any hospital across the country? Do you want me to change professions? And, you know, I asked me to be part owner with them. And it was my first opportunity to be an owner of a company. And so that's, and again, I I just, I learned so much. I mean,

Kyle Mountsier: 7:03

I learned Okay, so you came from I want to get before we get it back into auto because especially in the medical profession, but in sales, you came from utilizing CRMs or being a part of CRMs. What were some of the ones that you got the opportunity to be a part of or learn in, in that healthcare career? Oh, gosh,

Steve Roessler: 7:20

well, there? Well, I'll date myself for all the older folks listen to this. So ACT was the very first software I use where literally, you would download that to your computer, you almost needed just a computer to run ACT before it was cloud. Then I used a program called Goldmine, Goldmine was another one. In the medical industry, there was LeapFrog. And then when I got the taste of startup, I use Salesforce. I always loved Salesforce, because I was the only thing I knew. And then don't use HubSpot. And then obviously, I started using drive center because we couldn't afford a CRM as startup. So I used our own CRM company to grow the business. And I went, Oh,

Kyle Mountsier: 8:00

okay, so wait, you all utilize your own CRM?

Steve Roessler: 8:04

Well, we did back in the day, back in the day, keep our costs down. Right now it's, you know, because this CRM and that's one of the things I appreciate about CRMs is you can have an entity based CRM and a company based CRM to where like the Salesforce the HubSpot to lead Privacy Act I could put in like Nelson automotive and then I would have you know, Kyle and all the people underneath one account and I can email everybody in DriveCentric because it's entity you got to innovate, you know, send that email individually to people you know, so it's different but I made it work and I was able to send videos we still do use it a tad bit for obviously all the video portion. But now we we do put everything in a different CRM so we can track CRMs DMSs is inventory, what's everybody using so we can talk to the customer more about the tools that they're using.

Kyle Mountsier: 8:52

Alright, so you got to tell me are you using Salesforce using HubSpot? We're using

Steve Roessler: 8:56

Salesforce we use HubSpot, but we're on Salesforce most well I

Kyle Mountsier: 8:59

will say I appreciate the fact that you at least started the grind utilizing your own CRM because I think one of the hard things that I see a lot of in auto is like enterprise tech is great for everywhere outside of auto but in auto we kind of have to use our incident thing so for you all to start off like using the product that you use to sell dealers you know that they're going to use it totally changes the game and like your aptitude to innovate quicker because what what uh what you need now here's a question that I have because there is this like identity verse, verse entity or entity verse company however you want to talk about that. Do you see an end road to automotive thinking more like a company that might use a Salesforce that's company based and and think about that as like the the identity of like the household or the identity of the vehicle and managing some of the track thing like that? Are you all looking at that at DriveCentric thinking, hey, look, this is what we're experiencing over here in CRM, and we're serving this up in auto, how do we make those more closely aligned to take enterprise tech and bring it to auto?

Steve Roessler: 10:15

Well, I mean, number one, it's a great question. And I'll answer it this way. The answer is, as we do anything we want to do, you know, it'd be in a tech company. I mean, right now, we can't even get people to put in notes about, you know, Kyle, you have two kids, you know what I mean? So, to sit there and say, they're going to have like a tree of like a parent, kids, grandpa, whatever it may be. That's, it's a great way of thinking about it. While we can build that, again, our whole thing is, you know, let's help these deal customers, or let's have dealerships sell more cars. But it is a great idea. I mean, we have places we're putting people putting notes, where we give them you know, LinkedIn profiles and things like that. And we're going out there teaching dealerships, how to just do the little things, you know, to get a better customer experience, so they know who they're dealing with. But it No, it's a great opportunity to do something like that. Could be on our roadmap, we can, we'll never say no to anything. But it's just we have to prioritize what we're going to build. You know,

Kyle Mountsier: 11:15

if when, yeah, you know, one of the things that I love about like enterprise tech CRMs is this ability to like, you enter someone, and if their email is connected to an entity, boom, you just get right. And I think like you were saying, you're providing at least social profiles, right? So that there's that social, Oh, we found this person, it's connected to a couple things. Go, there's your research, and because that's what that's what like SAAS companies, do they go researcher, someone or a company based on these integrated profiles, right? Yeah.

Steve Roessler: 11:49

Yeah. And you know, there's, there's all these, I think the perception of what CRM is, is I think we're redefining what it is. And, you know, like, if people learn how to use a CRM for what it is today, where the customers are doing, I think they would better leverage some of the things like you're talking about, like understand relationships between customers and things of that nature. But we do we go out there and teach about social connecting, obviously, if you can link in Facebook with somebody and understand a little bit more about the customer, you know, do they have three kids? And I wonder why they went third row seating. So it again, it's, there's a lot that we can do. But a lot of times we're just teaching people like for example, I was on video. Yeah, well, okay,

Kyle Mountsier: 12:31

so let's just dispel something right now. Because we get people that listen all across the industry to this and and outside of our industry. And I think the word CRM, whether someone knows what Salesforce is, because they're just a customer, and they've heard it, or they've seen it on the f1 track, or they're in the industry, and they've heard CRM from their manager 800 times over the last two weeks, right? It always blew my mind how many people would be in the industry for three, four or five years? And CRM was still just an acronym? So what does CRM actually mean? Steve?

Steve Roessler: 13:05

Oh, my gosh, you know, I did a whole video on this. Because I would go around it nada is What does CRM stands for? And you heard everything. It was about a 50%. People got it, right. It's actually a video on our YouTube page. It's classic. But

Kyle Mountsier: 13:19

recall, man, oh, my

Steve Roessler: 13:21

God, you get it? All. Right. It's so nuts. But yeah, customer relationship management tool.

Kyle Mountsier: 13:29

There you go. So here's the thing, it's like, we forget the second, the second word there a lot were like, Oh, the CRM, it's a task manager. I would, I would disagree. It's a relationship manager. And I think that's what you're pressing back in, when you're talking about video and social profiles that you're going. It's not a task manager, it's a relationship manager. And the approach to the industry from a consumer side totally changes if you look at it differently, right?

Steve Roessler: 14:00

It will totally and relationship. But I think even that acronym is, you know, I always say has got to change. I mean, we go out there and we talk about more engagement focus, then data management focus, while every CRM including ours, obviously houses the data to and you know, to put in the information about the relationship and all that things. But right now in the car industry, people are all about right now, and not thinking about the, you know, I build a relationship which creates upstream marketing and easier conversation for one year down the road, if I use it for that relationship part of it. And unfortunately, and again, I've been in obviously, all these different industries. I've never had business rules in any other industry. So when you talk about task management, that's why people don't like it. I've got 100 things to do. What do I do first boss, you know, and I would rather have you reply to customers that are talking back to you today is the way we got to think about it. And so when we go out there and preach about how to lead Bridget's CRM, and I don't care what CRM you're on, you need to evaluate how many customers are talking to your store today, think of CRM as almost like a chat tool, you're chatting with text, you're chatting with video, you're chatting with live streaming, you're chatting with chat, you have to think for the first time your CRM is now an engagement platform, managing all your conversations in one place that

Kyle Mountsier: 15:22

you just said something you said that, that in other industries, business rules are not a thing. So explain first, what business rules mean, when it comes to like a CRM or a task management system? Explain that. And then explain like how other industries or how you've in the past or currently perceive conversation versus business rule?

Steve Roessler: 15:43

Yeah, well, now again, keep this in mind is I've been in industries where the average buying cycle could have been six months or a year. And so selling CRM, for example, it's no, you know, buying a car 70% of time and four days is a lot different than buying a car in six months. Right? So yeah, what I would be doing is the way I would always put it in my notes, and I'm always leveraging my future task. And I scheduled all my own tasks. And I put in there what I'm going to be doing for the future. So I don't have to think about it. So Kyle, if you're going to say, Hey, I'm installing a website, this, you know, for the next 30 days at my three stores, I'd be going in there, I'd put in my notes, and I'd say I'm calling them up in 30 days, how's the website project going? Are you done? And I know I'm calling Kyle up, and I'm saying, Hey, Kyle, how'd you do on your website? It's nothing about DriveCentric, but I know what you're doing. And that's the relationship part that nobody's thinking about. If a customer goes on vacation for two weeks, how's your vacation, people are going to engage you back by not talking business right away. And that's how

Kyle Mountsier: 16:47

you and that's a lot different than like, here's my five day task picked up the phone didn't answer left a message next, here's my other seven day task, right? Hopefully, there's another task in there for me because my internet manager set it up. And I'll get back to that one. Right? What you're saying is like, No, that's a human that you need to have a human connection with. And you leverage the technology to allow you to remember and cultivate that human relationship, right?

Steve Roessler: 17:14

Yeah, that's what should be you go in other industries. And I mean, now don't get me wrong. Could you have like rules up or things like that? You can, but I'd never in any of the industries I had, I never had a business rule. And I think if you go outside, just to even ask any friend in any other industry, if you got an internet lead, you have business rules, and be like, What the heck is a business rule? What do you tell somebody to follow up? They're gonna laugh, they're gonna laugh, they're gonna be like, You mean, you got to tell somebody to follow up with an inquiry? Somebody who's interested in your product? Go ask. It's comical. It's comical. I mean, it's like so that's the very first thing I had to learn in this industry. And I think as an outsider looking in, we've made our salespeople into robots, because now they don't know how to think for themselves as far as where the customers at in the journey of buying a car, because we dictated him and told them that you are going to be doing all these tasks. First teach them about, hey, we need to you get scheduled your own future task. And it all revolves around training. So yep.

Kyle Mountsier: 18:13

Well, okay. So when when you look at, like, where this industry is kind of headed in, in the way that we're like managing conversations, and you're saying, like training needs to happen? What are you seeing kind of in the ways that the most progressive dealers right now are engaging and interacting with customers? Like what what are people that are pushing the boundaries doing to engage customers in the showroom, outside the showroom? You know, in in follow up with leads? What are those dealerships doing? Because you get to be in and amongst a lot of these dealers? Oh, yeah. Always traveling and that type of stuff?

Steve Roessler: 18:50

Yeah, no, I think the biggest thing is, obviously everybody wants to get everybody in the physical showroom, right? We all know that. But I think that the days of doing 100 phone calls and 50 emails a day are long gone. I mean, I say that probably on every podcast, I hope somebody listens to this and resonates. But you know, texting is the number one form of communication. And I think if you take a look at how customers are communicating, especially the millennials or Gen Z's Gen A's, they process communication differently, just the way it is. So I'm actually doing a it's kind of funny, a classic digital dealer on Are you dating your internet leads? And what I'm showing is a parallel on doing like doing on an app like Bumble not that I'm married, so I have to learn all this stuff on the dating app. Right? Okay, so that's my wife's was not on Bumble. Honey. I did ask her if I could do a dating app just for like roleplay and type stuff. Yeah. But anyway, but you know, they take the communication from the dating app, and I transfer it to what do you think Kyle?

Kyle Mountsier: 19:53

Facebook Messenger. No, no,

Steve Roessler: 19:55

no, Snapchat. No way. Yeah. Yeah, I

Kyle Mountsier: 20:01

think you know, you know, what's crazy I had I had a conversation with before snap did a whole bunch of reorganization is their actual monthly active user growth is faster than both, like all other platforms right now, which is kind of mind boggling to me. So you're saying that they take it off platform, but they don't go to texting or phone calls or, or messenger, they go to Snapchat as their preferred communication platform.

Steve Roessler: 20:28

Because there's no personal information given, it takes like, I mean, I'm sure it's, it's, I don't want to give away everything on this. But it's a really good analogy to wait. What I'm trying to do is show how customers are communicating from that generation. And it's almost like you have to earn the right to transfer it to that phone call. So texting is going to be the like, as David kain will say, the on ramp, but I always say to earned the right to get the customer on the phone. And we have to teach the younger generation. Okay, what are the times where I have to ask for a phone call? Obviously, video, you know, people want to know, like, for example, I'll give you this little tidbit, believe it or not, when you go on these dating apps, people will go on for zoom dates, before they go on an actual date. Wow. Because they want to know they're not being catfished. So catfishing, in the auto industry is a lot like dating. So I want to know who the hell I'm talking with is the car available. We talked about transparencies, and that's where video and live streaming, all the technology that are in all these other worlds, like dating are applicable in the car industry. And it becomes very synergistic and normal to the customer when you offer that. But right now we were offering technology of communication, like how do you email your friends and family? I bet not

Kyle Mountsier: 21:47

never.

Steve Roessler: 21:48

So what does that make the customer I

Kyle Mountsier: 21:49

don't know, my uncle sometimes emails me some weird article on Facebook, but that's about it.

Steve Roessler: 21:57

We don't email our friends and family, I tell him no, just pretend the customers a friend communicate like they're your friends, and you'll be better. And if we just take that I don't care what CRM you're on. But just take the practice of what you do in your everyday life. And say what I do that to a customer, I'm emailing a customer, that doesn't make a lot of sense. But I'll send a Snapchat video to my friends, we'll send a video to your customers, your prospects

Kyle Mountsier: 22:19

are you seeing anyone take? Because I think this would be really like what's your Snapchat? Like? Why wouldn't we? Why wouldn't we engage? Like if if you have someone that's like, What's your preferred mode of communication? Like it? And then and then the answer is like, Should I text you Facebook message? Snapchat, or or video chat you like if those were the options? What if we did that as an industry?

Steve Roessler: 22:44

Well, no. Well, that's what you can do, right? I mean, there's nothing to say you couldn't do that. Today. It's gonna be hard to get somebody snapchatted me you got to search it and kind of find it. But But look, if I get a dealer, I'll just play it from what we do every day. If I have a dealer that's not respond to my email, why is he not respond to my email, probably because he's got 500 of them in his inbox. Now I'm not going to have a cell phone number, I'm probably going to have the dealership number and I guarantee it's gonna go to his voicemail and he's gonna delete all his voicemails. I'm gonna go on Facebook, I'm gonna go on LinkedIn, and I'm gonna friend him up and I'm just gonna, you know, maybe have a little dialogue with them, or, you know, you know, reach out, you know, just if I'm going to be in the area. Like,

Kyle Mountsier: 23:18

I think that we're too maybe afraid as as businesses to believe that like that, b2c can't act similar to b2b like that happens in the b2b world, why wouldn't we do that in the b2c world, go find that person and engage with them. Like, it's a client relationship doesn't matter where it at where it's and I mean, I like even I've been blind to that as an opportunity to engage with a potential customer, you know, they don't want to they won't accept it, that's fine. You know, keep the communication channel where they want to, but open up the opportunity, you know,

Steve Roessler: 23:51

yes, spray and pray. And that includes, to our point right here, social media could be Snapchat, I think, you know, if you get somebody on Snapchat, though, that's you've heard? Yeah, that's a pretty cool relationship, in my opinion. Right? Because you can find people on Snapchat, you know, you got to scan them in. But no, I got dealers I snap every now and then. I mean, I'm not that's not my preferred I'm usually on Messenger or LinkedIn, gram, whatever.

Kyle Mountsier: 24:15

Well, I think that the whole thought here is like engage people where they want to be engaged utilize the tools that we have in our industry for relationship not task management, and push the boundaries you know, like it's amazing to me that we just kind of like we're just kind of willing to go at the the regular flow and I think everything I hear you consistently say is like no push the boundaries try the next thing. Like hey, look, it might not ever work for every customer, but why wouldn't you let them know you can do a video with them right? Why wouldn't you give them the access to that like push the boundaries you know,

Steve Roessler: 24:51

yeah, and look and no CRM does like all these communications and track it all, you know, but what I do is if I let's say, communicate with you, Kyle, and I'm hitting you you on Facebook Messenger, then I'm going to put in the notes of what I got out of my Facebook Messenger conversation in my CRM. And I put it in as a call note, and I just put in our FB link is Li, so I am writing so then I know where that communication is happening. I could go back and reference it.

Kyle Mountsier: 25:20

It's great. That's great. Well, Steve, I'm just encouraged. I'm ready to go like, try some new things after having this conversation with you. Appreciate the time with you, Steve, always, always energetic and encouraging. And thanks for all that you do and for our industry. So on behalf of the whole Auto Collabs team, thanks for joining us today. You got me

Steve Roessler: 25:40

you didn't say anything about that hair, the hairs on point I came the hair,

Kyle Mountsier: 25:43

the hair is dialed? Absolutely. All right. All right, buddy. Imagine for just a minute that all the tech companies in auto actually use their product, how much better that product would be? Oh, goodness, the fact that now I know they don't do it now, you know, because DriveCentric has kind of graduated. But the fact that early the early days of DriveCentric all their employees had to use their technology to sell and to engage with dealers. I know that that's why I think they're like six years in I know that that's why they accelerated quickly. Because when you're forced to use what you use every single day, and what your customers your end users using it automatically, industry gets fixed. It just gets fixed quickly. Yeah,

Paul Daly: 26:37

they call that eating your own cooking. Vague, right? When you eat your own cooking, you understand more salt, less salt, I'm never making that, again, we need to work on that we need to improve that. But that I mean, unfortunately, there's not really an opportunity to do that across the, you know, platforms with tech companies, etc. But you're right, that is an amazing point. The second you start using it in the correct application, right, not building it not developing and not understanding how it works, right, because every engineer understands how it works. But not everyone understands how it feels on the other side of it working is really what it comes down to.

Michael Cirillo: 27:15

The point that comes to my mind to to that effect is that when when any business wants to adopt a new piece of technology or a new software platform, whatever. That's the question that always gets mixed mess missed rather, which is do I have the full bandwidth to commit to this piece of software this technology fully? Because we all know to both of your points if they did, how much more they would actually get from that software. But I mean, all of us have had experiences I mean, I even have software that I'm like, I'm probably not using that to the fullest of its capabilities. And if I did, what would actually come from it. So super strong point. You know, obviously we hope you enjoyed this conversation with Steve Roessler like wrestler, the man with the hair on behalf of Kyle Mountsier Paul J. Daly and myself, Michael Cirillo. Thanks for joining us here on Auto Collabs

Unknown: 28:09

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