If you could bottle up and sell Brian Benstock’s energy, coffee sales would take a serious hit.
The car dealer from Queens, New York, brought all of his passion, energy, and ideas to the stage of the Western Canadian Dealer Summit in Banff, Alberta, and openly shared how he had managed to take a landlocked car dealership with little physical real estate and transformed it into the number one Honda and Acura dealership in the world.
Benstock is the General Manager and Vice President of Paragon Honda and Paragon Acura; his dealerships sell a staggering 1,000 cars per month, or approximately 34 cars every day. He is a highly sought-after speaker and media darling who has been interviewed by organizations like CNN Money, Fox Business, Bloomberg Technology, CBS News, the New York Daily News, and many more.
In Banff, he was interviewed by Mathew Growden (“Growdy”), formerly a key driver of Google Canada’s automotive unit but now a consultant and speaker.
The two sat for a fireside chat to close out the last day of the event. Benstock’s passion for the business and continued drive for more innovation and growth energized the room and got car dealers excited and buzzing.
Benstock shared all the secrets to his success, including revealing the plans behind his latest idea: “Project Pluto.” For that project he relies on the data analysts of his team to mine the dealership’s DMS database and find customers with the “highest statistical probability” of doing business with them — and that have positive equity in their vehicles.
Then the dealership sends those customers postcards, direct mailers, and follows up with calls. He said his team is just now testing the process. On the first go around, they sent 1,000 postcards, sold 100 cars, and generated more than $400,000 worth of profit in 30 days. He said the project only cost the dealership about $20,000 to implement. He encouraged dealers to try something similar with their own databases. “If you are successful with Project Pluto — it doesn’t hurt me.”
His belief that the industry could only benefit by him openly sharing ideas was something he repeated during his presentation, and said other Honda dealers aren’t his competition — it’s really the aftermarket that is taking away so many customers, once their vehicles are out of warranty. “We aren’t going after the other Honda dealers. They aren’t the enemy… The enemy is the aftermarket.”
He said his team created a map of all the car repair shops in his market. And while there were a handful of dealerships, there were an incredible number of aftermarket providers — more than 17,000 — that were more than happy to take his service business from him. “What if we go after the 80 per cent of our customers that we lose to the aftermarket for service?” he said.
During the spirited, if at times rambling discussion, Benstock reminded dealers he’s a car dealer and not a public speaker. “I’m trying things out, I’m one of you. I’ve made every mistake you can make,” said Benstock.
He said when he met the Google team he realized that, as smart as they were, they didn’t have all the industry insights he had. He said once a junior at Google, for example, broke down his vehicle inventory into “new” and “old” vehicles. Benstock stopped him in his tracks: “No, no we don’t call them ‘old’ vehicles,” he laughed.
But despite their quirks, he does listen and rely on the next generation of digital marketers and analysts to provide insights he can use for his business. Benstock said he talked to the Google people about the fact that customers couldn’t really contact or interact with anyone from Google. Then Google wanted to work with him on vehicle sales.
Because convenience was often cited as a reason people stop visiting their dealership for service, in 2017 Benstock came up with an idea: what if we provide free pick up and drop off for service customers?
The dealership has now picked up and dropped off 200,000 cars from their customers driveways and returned them after service. The service isn’t only for big jobs either, but also for routine oil changes and maintenance. “Doing what’s best for the customer ends up being what’s best for you,” he said.
He asked the dealers: “who in the heck wants to go to a service department? What’s that process like? You wait in line to be written up, you eat stale bagels and drink bad coffee.”
He said when people are contacted to approve service jobs it’s almost always two simple questions: how much will it cost and how long will it take? Many times customers in the store will refuse additional work even if recommended by the service advisor.
But for the pickup and delivery customers? “Never did I dream that the service repair orders on pick up and deliveries would be three times higher than when customers are in the store!” said Benstock.
Benstock said that by taking the time out of the process and giving it back to the customers, everyone wins. He said think about Amazon Prime: it’s free delivery, but it just keeps you constantly ordering new things.
Benstock said it’s been frustrating at times trying to implement new ideas, because the OEMs and even his own accounting people push back on some of his ideas, like free delivery. They always try to play it safe, he said.
During his talk, Benstock dropped all sorts of one-liners and words of wisdom. One banker we talked with said he had a full page of notes just on Benstock.
“The shepherd has to smell like the sheep,” said Benstock, arguing that managers need to be on the floor with their people not locked in offices away from the action. When he delivered this line, Benstock left the stage and sat at a table with delegates to reinforce his point.
The three I’s that are the most important are, “intelligence, intensity and integrity,” was another of his catchphrases. And finally: “The biggest room in the dealership is the room for improvement.”
For moderator Growden, it didn’t take much to nudge Benstock into providing a narrative or a colourful story to back up his ideas. Even though it was the last presentation of the day, the room remained packed as dealers and delegates were in rapt attention listening to the energetic Benstock describe how he innovated — and continues to do so every day.
