Elevating the customer experience
Every year at NADA, the Canadian auto dealer team talks with dozens of suppliers, dealers and industry players to get a sense of what’s new, the trends, and what to expect in the year ahead.
This year, the overwhelming focus for many suppliers and players was centered around the customer. Dealers, and the suppliers they work with, recognize that the current way we buy, sell and service vehicles isn’t on par with the experience consumers encounter in their daily lives. Dealers went to NADA to find ways to narrow that gap, and suppliers were more than happy to chat about it.
Louis-Yves Cloutier, President
360 Agency
“Our goal is to integrate the entire front end of a dealership. We are an advertising agency, and we build websites for car dealers and customize them based on their unique needs. We also have our own proprietary CRM platform, so you start with advertising, websites then manage your customer relationship management and lead management. We have a consulting division that helps dealers make the transition between the tools and real life.” Read full interview…
Trevor Henderson, CEO
Adesa Canada
“One of our strategic initiatives at Adesa that does impact TradeRev is enhancing the logistics experience. Most dealers are space constrained, and don’t want a car that is being wholesaled on their lot any more than it absolutely has to. What we’ve done over the past couple of years is really expand our ‘Drive Away Services.’ We’ve invested in transport vans, and hired over 300 drivers to give us the ability, within a hundred kilometers radius, to pick up a car and drop off a car. Same day or next day, and that’s a huge change for the Canadian industry.”
Rick Johnston, VP
Autovance
“We’ve been able to take what was already really deep integration and strengthened it even more. So the theme of the year for us has really been integration: we’ve expanded who we integrate to. We’ve been taking what was an app or a product for example, and we’re transitioning it from a tool into a platform. We will be coming to the Canadian market with a whole front end solution in the next 12 months — it’s in the development pipeline.” Read full interview…
Brad Rome, President
Canadian Black Book
“NADA has been amazing. It’s always great to see a bunch of dealers and partners. The thing I love about dealers is their resilience. They’re always about trying to figure out how to make a dollar, which I give them credit for and that means being resilient to change. There’s a lot on the horizon right now: you’ve got electric vehicles, autonomous vehicles, car sharing, e-commerce, but you know, as long as they can adapt to that change, they’re going to do well.” Read full interview…
Diego Sanson, Vice President, International Business Development
CarGurus
“People always ask us: ‘what’s different about you?’. We built our website thinking about what the consumer wants, needs and desires. And we really based it around unbiased transparency, because from a consumer perspective, you’re looking for guidance to understand — is this a good deal or not? For us it’s not just about price, it’s also about reputation and you put those things together and that’s what a good deal is. A cheap price from someone with a bad reputation makes them nervous.” Read full interview…
Jeff Clark, VP Media Solutions
Cox Automotive Canada
“For Dealer.com we now have sales people in place across the country, and we have a complete operational team. They’re trained, ready to go, and the team is fully bilingual. It’s important for us to have a strong national presence. With Dealer.com we have the power of the biggest website platform in the world with more than 60 per cent of the U.S. market, so we have all that great strong technology in the backend — and the right team. As for Dealertrack, we know digital retailing is the future. We want to make the functionality as seamless as possible so that shoppers can spend less time and have an improved customer journey.” Read full interview…
Brian Brown, CEO
Dave Cantin Group
“We’ve talked to a significant number of dealers that are thinking about their plans for the future, wondering what their succession plan is and potentially selling their dealership. We are talking with different dealer operators, and groups that are looking to expand. There’s lots of mergers and acquisitions activity, and 2019 looks like it’s going to be even stronger. The average age of a dealer owner in the United States and Canada right now is about 65-70. So it is an aging dealer body.” Read full interview…
Dennis Welsh, Director, Marketing
Dealer-FX
“I think one platform from Dealer-FX is an end-to-end solution so dealers are not buying from one provider to another one. It’s all connected together and basically with one platform we can actually give them a lot of data. We can show them where the process is breaking down, so with minor tweaks and changes within that process, they can actually be more efficient, more profitable and actually service more vehicles with the same tool.” Read full interview…
Farid Ahmad, President and Founder
Dealer Solutions North America
“We are talking about a time of change and uncertainty. We go to all these events that deal with mobility as a service, electrification of the vehicle, declines in service, revenue, the job of the front margins and these things that dealers are like, I just have to get out of this game. Maybe they’re not sleeping at night but they should be, because the one thing that technology can’t take away is the need for a local presence for consumers to service and buy their vehicles. At the end of the day, every manufacturer still wants the representation and that will never go away. But customer service is the new battleground. If you have not adapted to new technology to enhance your presence on the internet, to appraise vehicles or to improve your DMS and CRM systems, you’re going to be in real trouble. Making that commitment is also a financial plus.” Read full interview…
Sejal Pietrzak, President & CEO
DealerSocket
“If I were to talk about NADA, I would probably sum it up in one word: momentum. It’s been an incredible year. The investments we’ve made in our software as well as in our service and our support — we have great results in the momentum that we are seeing here. This weekend is just one piece of what we are feeling as a company, and so we are looking forward to a great 2019.” Read full interview…
Alexi Venneri, Co-Founder & CEO
Digital Air Strike
“Last year we talked about artificial intelligence. We’ve been able to really grow and expand on that. People initially thought it was chat, and chat bots, It’s really now online virtual assistants that are able to help dealers transact, and provide an excellent consumer experience. People still think of us as a social media technology company. While we still do that, we’ve actually been able to map the whole consumer journey and add pieces to that where we can influence consumer behaviour. We drive them to our dealers and give them an unfair online advantage.” Read full interview…
Michael Ryan O’Connor, President & CEO
E-Block
“In the auction world there are auction buyers and then there are the people who buy online. That’s changing now. There’s a lot of online buyers, but we really cater to the people who are used to the brick and mortar experience. There’s a massive run list in advance. We have people buying 20-30 cars. There’s this misconception with online platforms that they’re slow, so it’s exciting to show dealers cars being sold in 60 seconds.” Read full interview…
Rob Mackenzie, VP Sales
Final Coat
“I’m looking for alternative methods of bringing our technology to a vehicle. We already have one potential solution where we don’t hook up directly to a car battery to power our product. As we see our market move from the internal combustion engine into the hybrid and electrified world, we know that that’s just going to be a very important thing.” Read full interview…
Howard Cobham, Senior Vice President Dealer Services
GM Financial
“We have a setup where I can sit down with the dealers, with some privacy and confidentiality, to talk about their business — and this has been really helpful for us. We worked hard ahead of the show towards getting the lists, contacting dealers and inviting them to our booth. And resoundingly they have come to visit us. This is maybe our eighth NADA as a business in Canada and as GM financial in the United States as well.” Read full interview…
Ryan Osten, General Counsel
Gubagoo
“So far NADA has been amazing. We’re launching new products around virtual retailing and I think that has had a tremendous impact on the interest and demand at the booth to see our demos. We recently launched apple business chat at the show, which is native chat with businesses on apple devices through apple messages. That’s a really important new channel. Everything is moving towards messaging these days, as I’m sure is no surprise. It’s convenience.” Read full interview…
Adam Robinson, CEO
Hireology
“Dealers are looking for ways to improve the business and are asking great questions. It costs a dealership approximately $16,000 every time somebody turns over at a dealership. If you are turning over 70 per cent of your sales staff each year, that could be costing you about $360,000 a year, just using rough back of the napkin math. Dealerships need to see their jobs as products. No one wants to buy a full commision, no career path, 70 hours a week product.” Read full interview…
Robert Issenman, President & CEO
LAR: Leader Auto Resources
“Larger dealer groups are looking to have uniformity and simplicity. They’re looking to be able to interchange staff from one dealership to another and find the same setups and processes everywhere. Our objective is to make them as cost effective and cost efficient as possible. We’re here to improve their process and we’re here to streamline — all of which can help dealers save money.” Read full interview…
Pierre-Olivier Benoit, Director Sales & Marketing
Metalia
“Dealers want to be able to change cabinets. Honestly, for all dealers their basic needs are sort of the same. But for some smaller dealerships we will build a little workstation for each technician. For the larger ones, we might do a wall to wall. More and more customers are seeing their workshop, and we want to make it appear clean — among other things. We also offer one standard colour and that’s something quite unique to us.” Read full interview…
Andrew Tai, CEO
MotoInsight
“That whole ‘buy online, pick up in store’ over the last few years in other retail sectors from groceries to electronics from Walmart has completely transformed the way mainstream consumers shop. They now expect that in automotive. Digital retailing can deliver a differentiated customer experience, allowing the customer to shop whenever, wherever, and however they want on any device at any point in time online or in store — we’re going to deliver that.” Read full interview…
Patrick Manzi, Senior Economist
National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA)
“NADA has forecasted sales of 16.8 million new cars and light trucks in 2019, which would represent a decline in sales of about 3 per cent compared to 2018. New vehicle sales totaled 17.3 million units in 2018, marking the fourth straight year of sales above 17 million units.” Read full interview…
Trevor Robinson, Director of Retail Solutions, Training & Development
NCM Associates
“Our data has been indicating changes that everyone has been talking about — margin pressures and so on and so forth. This is the year that margin pressure, perhaps a plateau in sales, and with market share challenges it’s going to lead to real profitability challenges.” Read full interview…
Lynn McNeil, Sr. Vice-President
PBS Systems
“If we go into your store and we try to train the new service manager for a day, we might get one to two hours of that individual’s time. Now we provide a facility. It’s easy to get to and it’s local for all intents and purposes. So far we have a decent number of registrations for what we’re doing in February. We will extend that to spring, fall and summer. The workshops that we are doing are new hire workshops, so that could be a new service manager or new service advisor, for example. The goal is to have them be monthly in Milton as well as in Calgary.” Read full interview…
Shelly Scott, VP Business Communications
PBS Systems
“One of the exciting things we are talking about this year is our newly enhanced CRM. The one we previously had in place for the sales departments has now been completely enhanced. Our customers and prospects are really, really excited about some of those big changes. We’ve really embedded the CRM, because typically we will go into a store and find that some dealers are using multiple vendors to accomplish their business goals.” Read full interview…
Charlie Bass, VP Sales
PureCars
“We are trying to get away from how many clicks or page views you got and go more towards did I sell a vehicle and what’s my return on that advertising investment so I can try and track it all the way down to the conversion funnel. It’s not just about looking at phone calls, email leads, and things that are very linear, because a lot of times consumers will go to Facebook, Google the manufacturer sites, and then they may not even call or email before walking into the dealership. We can now show the dealers all of those different points and how engaged that consumer was, and then give credit to each of those advertising mediums.” Read full interview…
Maury Marks, President & CEO
Quorum Information Technologies
“Our vision has always been: we want to be an end-to-end business process and we want to provide all the pieces with our sales CRM. Now we are at the point where we really should be an end-to-end business process for dealerships in service where you don’t really need that many other third party products. And that’s what we’re trying to do for dealerships.” Read full interview…
David Bates, VP Customer Support
Reynolds & Reynolds
“We’ve got some products that our customers are excited about that use predictive analytics to try and help move the dealer towards being the dealer of the future. We’ve got a system that is designed to drive efficiency and effectiveness not only on the operational side of the dealership — but that also changes the consumer experience from a retail perspective. We’ve got dealers that have started to adopt our graphical user interface solution and they’re starting to get into our advanced products that link docuPAD and our advanced server solutions. So dealers are starting to realize those efficiencies and are seeing bottom line results from it.” Read full interview…
Chuck Hoyt, VP of Sales
Reynolds & Reynolds
“I think last year in Canada the sales year-over-year dip was fairly significant. It was still a good year, but the margin compression that dealers are seeing on the sales side — they’re looking for ways to maximize their profit opportunity with every customer, whether it’s the front-end or the back-end of the business. And that’s what our focus has been.” Read full interview…
Andy Moss, CEO
Roadster
“We’ve been deep in digital retailing and online commerce and omnichannel for many years now. It feels like every time you go to the show, the rest of the industry becomes one more step towards this. We came to realize that the digital retailing software is perhaps more important in today’s day and age to be in the hands of the salesperson at the store. Having four to six people touch every single deal is still the traditional model. I think the trend is moving closer to a one person selling model but it’s not going to get there overnight.” Read full interview…
Gary Turac, Senior Director Strategic Partnerships
RouteOne Canada
“We are here to make an announcement. We’re in the process of bringing on finance sources that are in a position to support electronic signature. It opens up discussions around a conditional sales contract, credit applications and even envisioning being able to do that through some of our OEM partners. The technology is in place. Frictionless commerce, enhanced customer experience and customer journey is still disconnected. At the end of the day, it’s how you bring all of those together.” Read full interview…
Nino Malka, National Sales Director
Serti Dealership System
“We want to grow with our partners and support the customer experience. We want to make sure users are understanding the system, embracing the culture and that they are happy with our service. It’s a big advantage for us to offer bilingual training. We’re also developing new products. I’m not sure that I can name all the new products coming up, but dealers can expect to see new stuff — so stay tuned.” Read full interview…
Bri Newman, Vice-President
The Minery
“It was my second time attending NADA, but first time exhibiting. Overall we’re really happy. We know the industry spends a lot of time around the job candidate experience, and creating your employer brand, which is really, really important. But our sweet spot is connecting that whole experience to post hire. Creating really strong onboarding plans, training, compliance, all of those pieces. So we’re really targeting the whole gamut when it comes to the employee lifecycle.” Read full interview…
Dominic Ismaele, CEO/Managing Partner
Tire Storage Solutions
“This is our seventh year coming and this is the highest volume that we’ve had. We’ve also noticed that dealers are interested in growing their tire storage business. They’re really looking at customer retention, so they seem to be grasping it. I’ve never really seen Americans get as involved with tire storage as they are now.” Read full interview…
Matt Lawson, VP Dealer Groups & OEM
Trader
“We’re developing on a Canadian platform for Canadian dealers to market and for Canadian consumers. That is the strategy that we have in Canada — first innovate for the Canadian market instead of waiting for things to be developed in the U.S. and brought to Canada. And dealers are encouraged by that. Dealers want to know that their partners have their back and are helping them to continue that progressive curve. Our innovation roadmap is really robust, and the feedback has been awesome. It’s been a great show so far.” Read full interview…
Morry Patoka, EVP & COO
Vicimus
“I think overall we’ve had really great experience at NADA. We’ve created a software to facilitate the entire one-to-one marketing and customer experience. We are able to deploy on a dealership scale, to each dealership and in each of the five departments. When you have the software and intelligence to automatically look for opportunities with customers and prospects, it helps.” Read full interview…
