The Canadian auto dealer team interviewed dozens of suppliers to find out more about their latest offerings. Here is a snapshot from the show floor
The convention floor at this year’s NADA Convention & Expo was a hotbed of activity, and Canadian auto dealer visited some of the industry’s leading suppliers who provide services to Canadian dealers to get the low-down on what they were showcasing at this year’s event.
Dynamic Booths Having a colorful and interactive booth helps to draw in customers, but some vendors like SiriusXM Canada even add music.
Beyond providing an upbeat atmosphere in the SiriusXM Canada booth, Mike Mazgay, Director, Fleet & Remarketing, SiriusXM Canada, says disc jockey personalities spinning sets show dealers what SiriusXM Canada customers are enjoying in their vehicles.
“It gives the customer an extra option when they drive off the lot,” says Mazgay.
Some booths just look inviting — like the one from DealerSocket.The company was pleasantly surprised to hear it won best booth at the convention.
“We didn’t even know this was an award,” says Sam Rizek, Director, Director of Sales & Business Development for DealerSocket.
Rizek says the company’s approach at NADA is to make the booth a fun and relaxing environment, in which attendees could sit in a comfortable customer appreciation lounge to have drinks, and interact with the DealerSocket staff who wore T-shirts. Customers even received gift bags.
Along with its revitalized booth, the company is also showcasing its new attitude at the trade show. Rizek points down to his name tag, which bears DealerSocket’s new approach to its dealer customers.
“We are automotive,” says Rizek, meaning the company is moving away from its roots solely as a CRM provider and is now focusing on providing a more integrated system for customers.
“The days for having a different system for service, for sales —it’s all going away,” says Rizek. “I think that’s what is attracting dealers to us.”
Hot products Booths at the NADA show floor are always packed with new products, especially as vendors are trying to stay on track with all of the trends and changes happening in the industry.
One of the big ones that vendors are seeing dealers warm up to is the adoption of mobile platforms.
“Dealers are now becoming very comfortable using a mobile device to run what is a very critical component of their business,” says Trevor Henderson, Chief Operating Officer, Adesa, adding Adesa is ramping up its own mobile efforts to simplify the auction process for dealers who are either buying or selling vehicles.
Adesa offers two apps; one of which is the LiveBlock mobile app which uses broadcast technology to enable a dealer to bid remotely on vehicles running through a physical auction, without having to attend it.
The company also launched its Marketplace mobile app recently, which takes the features from Adesa’s website and makes them accessible via the mobile platform, such as scanning a VIN, pulling up vehicle history reports, adding vehicles to watch lists and then subsequently bidding on them.
Canadian Black Book is another company that is changing the way dealers can access data and appraise a vehicle through its new mobile tool called CBB Connect.
“It’s no secret anymore that mobile is the way everyone is going,” says Josh Bailey, vice-president, Research and Editorial, Canadian Black Book, who is seeing a growth in mobile subscriptions and fewer books distributed every month. “We all live it [mobile]. We rely on it more and more for our personal lives.”
Building relationships
For some vendors, NADA provides an opportunity for them to meet with dealers face-to-face to discuss and improve existing software and platforms.
While Reynolds & Reynolds is busy demoing its new docuPAD tablets, which helps to streamline and adds transparency to the F&I process, the company is also focused on improving its existing systems.
“We are fine tuning consumer-facing systems to make sure dealers get the most out of every opportunity, without disrupting the customer experience,” says Jonathan C. Strawsburg, vice-president, Product Planning, Reynolds & Reynolds. Such is the case for its ERA-IGNITE DMS, which has been rebuilt over the years and is now gaining traction in Canada.
Maury Marks, President & CEO and one of the founders of Quorum, says the company came to NADA with a different approach this year.
“We’re not only focused on talking to prospects but also talking to existing customers who come here,” says Marks.
“They are really meaningful conversations,” says Marks, adding dealers are able to learn what is new within the software in addition to the components that are being underutilized, based on mini utilization surveys.
But the software is only as good as the people who are using it. “The biggest challenge we face in our industry is getting dealers to be trained and working the software properly,” says Dean Anton, vice-president and General Manager of CDK Global.
The trick, says Anton, is to make new and existing software responsive and easy to understand. Online courses are a good way of training staff without them having to leave the dealership, he adds.
Now that Canadian dealers are more aware about the latest product offerings and tools, being the best vendor partner is not always about telling dealers what they have to do and how to get more leads, says Brent Wees, Partner and Client Services Director, Glovebox. Wees emphasizes it’s also about helping Canadian dealers execute the process in the right way.
“The dealership as a whole from the top down needs to radically shift and get that vision and that straight line locked in,” says Wees, so that dealer principals can help drive home the brand message and help with internal adoption.
Even Glovebox has also shifted its own organization from a digital marketing agency to software developers, he says.
Graham Line, vice-president, Business Development, Search Optics and NADA veteran, sums up the vendor and dealer partnership based on his experience: “We’re almost like family here.”
