Driving Solutions with Jim Fitzpatrick, powered by CBT News

Why Process, Not Leads, Decides Your Dealership’s ROI

• CBT News • Season 1 • Episode 15

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We cut through AI hype and zero in on performance, showing how process, follow-up, and clear communication drive higher close rates across multi-store operations. We share measurable ways to vet vendors, deploy AI as a useful assist, and get back to basics: conversations sell cars.

• market pulse on Nissan momentum and Q4 outlook
• multi-store BDC leadership and service BDC coordination
• AI as triage and routing, not a replacement
• CRM source reporting to prove ROI
• vendor vetting: measurable results, integration, partnership
• recovering the missing 70% with structured follow-up
• using digital retail to answer real questions fast
• onboarding and support tailored to store processes
• back-to-basics: conversations, documentation, consistency


Driving Solutions is the go-to podcast for dealership professionals who want to stay sharp, informed, and ahead of the curve. Hosted by Jim Fitzpatrick and powered by CBT News, each episode brings you real strategies, smart tools, and expert insights to help you run a more profitable operation.

Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and visit CBTNews.com for more.

Announcer:

This is Driving Solutions exclusively on CBTnews.com.

Jim Fitzpatrick:

Hey everyone, Jim Fitzpatrick. Welcome into another edition of Driving Solutions right here at CBTnews.com. Dealerships are bombarded with tech vendors selling, you know, to the promises of AI. AI has been the buzzword of the day, maybe the month and even the year. But how do dealerships cut through the noise and focus on what works and what doesn't? And it with regard to performance, that's the name of the game. That's the priority today is performance. On today's show, we're diving into just that very topic with Tim Cox, who's the co-founder of Car Now, and Micah Rowland, who's the variable ops director at Mike Resi Nissan here in Atlanta. Gentlemen, thank you so much for joining me on the show today.

Tim Cox :

Thanks, Jim. Good to be here again. Yeah.

Jim Fitzpatrick:

Thank you. Uh you've been here before. Welcome back. Mike, you're a first timer, so welcome in to CBT News. We won't be too rough on you today. First and foremost, how's business at Mike Rezi?

Micah Rowland:

Yeah, business is great. Yeah. Love being at Mike Rezi Nissan. Yeah, yeah. Definitely the transition from I came from one of his stores in Tennessee, came down to the Atlanta area. It's been a great transition, great place to be. Sure. Yeah, no question about it.

Jim Fitzpatrick:

I talked to a lot of Nissan stores over the last six months, and they're feeling very good about the turnaround of Nissan.

Micah Rowland:

Yeah. Units are moving. That's all I can say. August was great. Going into September, going into this quarter here is going to be very strong for us. Yeah, that's that's fantastic.

Jim Fitzpatrick:

It's a great brand. There's no question about it. Um talk to us a little bit about your day-to-day operation or your day-to-day responsibility there.

Micah Rowland:

So my day-to-day looks something I manage uh internet and BDC departments across uh four different stores over three OEMs, so not just Nissan, Kia, and Hyundai as well. And my responsibility directly is to make sure that our communication side of our BDC and internet office is relevant and clean to the customer, making sure that processes are in place, making sure the communication between four digital ships is very strong. And at the end of the day, making sure that those departments know how to perform in conjunction with the store as a whole. Right. Um I also manage and oversee a four-store service BDC that does service inbound and outbound for all four of those locations. Wow. Yeah. Wow, that's right. I'm also responsible, yeah, big responsibility.

Jim Fitzpatrick:

Yeah, for sure. Wow. When when do you sleep?

Micah Rowland:

Uh well, I find time. I don't know when, but I find time. Yeah.

Jim Fitzpatrick:

And Mike calls and says, how many and what's the gross? Right? And that's all that's all any dealer ever wants to hear. That's exactly right. Right. So, Tim, you know, we hear in the industry so much about AI. I uh it's almost nauseating at this point in time. Everybody that has sat there and people that have zoomed in, we talk so much about it. There's some dealers that aren't even really sure of it at this point in time. Um, you know, as you know, uh as an old car guy, we want to sell cars. That's what we want to do. At the name, you know, at the at the end of the day, that's where the rubber meets the road. Everything else is is kind of magic out there. But when that Mike Rezi calls and says how many and how much, yeah, that's what you got to answer to, right? Talk to us a little bit about that because we see so many vendors out there that come in, talk about their AI capabilities. Uh, I know you've got them as well, but uh what what should dealers be focused on?

Tim Cox :

I I think dealers need to be focused on the same thing they should be focused on for years, and that's their own, not my report, not another vendor's report, but their own source report in their CRM. Right. Is that vendor moving the needle? Is it selling more cars? I think, and there's a lot of great AI companies out there, uh, incredible companies out there, that are doing some great stuff. We're building on AI, in fact, have uh brand new products that are coming out now. Um, but I truly believe, and and one of the reasons uh that Micah is here is just to uh communicate at the end of the day. I think AI right now is a lot like the EV market in the United States. If everyone just let EVs go and everybody drove an EV, uh, we'd have a problem. Power, not to get political, power grids, charging stations, but everybody right now could drive a hybrid. Right. And it, you know, use AI to immediately handle the customer, push them into a direction. Most dealerships don't have a lead problem, they have a lead process problem. That's a good point. So therefore, getting them to the right person and then making that handoff to a human inside uh the dealership, uh the numbers speak for themselves. Yeah, for sure.

Jim Fitzpatrick:

Micah, what do what do you look for? You know, there's there's so many, there's old and new tech vendors out there today claiming that they all have the best solution in the industry. If you walk through NADA, it's kind of like walking through a car wash of vendors that are just bombarding you, you probably feel the same way, especially if you're wearing a brown badge and like you're a dealer? Wait a minute, I want I want to talk to you. But how do you cut through all of the noise? And how do you decide, okay, this is the this is the solution that's gonna work best for us?

Micah Rowland:

So everybody's got the next wow, right? Yeah. That's I mean, every time they mention AI, it's the best, it will do this for you. But what I have found, you know, I vet vendors almost every day, if not every week. I have someone calling me all the time saying, hey, look at my product. It's either it's it's not a fix and it's not a replace. Yeah, it's it's a partner with you and can it enhance what you're doing day to day? Sure. So when I'm vetting a vendor or or and someone that's got AI attached to their solution, I look for a few different things. I look, you know, can the results be measured in any sort of capacity? Is there an ROI that goes along with it? Two, is it can it be implemented into your current process? Does it help make you more efficient and more effective? Uh third, you know, is the vendor an actual partner? And I consider communication a two-way street. One of the things we coach in our BDCs is communication is key. Are you saying the right thing to the customer? Right. And if you're not, are you able to correct yourself? And two, are you documenting that communication? I think that's where dealers fail across the board is the communication is not documented, so you don't know. Right. So I look at it from is the is the vendor, are they actually a partner and are they invested in you? And in turn, is the dealer actually invested enough to want to learn? Because looking at ad budgets every day, if you're not invested into the vendor, it's just fat on your budget. And then at the end of the day, can it be expanded over across multiple rooftops? I've got four stores, Car Now's in three of them. And um the the segue we have had switching to that product has been has been huge.

Jim Fitzpatrick:

Oh, that's great. That's great. I see you shaking your head. You want to add to that?

Tim Cox :

No, I it's a beautiful thing to hear because at the end of the day, it is just about selling cars. And and that's one thing that we pride ourselves in is taking care of that dealer. And I think some that one of the things, and there again, there's other great companies that may have started this way, but you know, our company started inside my store when I was managing a store here in Atlanta.

Jim Fitzpatrick:

I remember.

Tim Cox :

And that service aspect, you did you talk about being a uh are you a partner? You know, that it's like it's like culture. That wrote that word's thrown around a lot, of course, but are you really? Right. You know, are you there to answer the phone on a Saturday at seven o'clock at night when things, you know, something might happen? Are you gonna truly partner with that dealer to make sure that you correct that reserve that's right, right?

Jim Fitzpatrick:

We hear so much about, you know, at the end of the day, who is following up with these leads that come in. Like you said, we don't have a lead problem, we have a process problem. I agree with you. Talk to us a little bit about your new lead follow-up solution.

Tim Cox :

Very excited. Obviously, we have some inside track. You know, there's and and we have the ability, we we have the privilege, I guess, uh to work with some incredible dealer groups, and and not to name we just incredible dealer groups, incredible operators and leaders across the country, but even they will tell you that it's almost impossible to follow up with every single lead. Right. Um so we know, and especially as in Micah store, we're converting chat to lead in one of his stores almost 90%. So almost 90% of the time, 85, 90% of the time, you know, they're clicking on a button, we're getting that lead information, and some of his stores are closing in the 25, 30 percent. So if you're taking that's great, but still those are way exceeding average. Yeah. But what happens to the other 70 percent? What happens to the 70%? 70% is a bigger number. Exactly. Right? So so we're extremely encouraged. And in full disclosure, we we launched a product called Reconnect at the beginning of the year and needed some work like anything else. So we went back to the drawing board, while it was out. We had some incredible dealers, hey, it needs to be more conversational. So now the numbers that we're getting back from uh the dealers that have ReConnect, so yes, we're putting all these leads into your CRM, uh, but at the same time, it is a tool that is customized, I think, as the big thing. Okay. Uh being able to follow up one day, three days, seven days, you know, whatever the dealer wants and get back and at least start a conversation to make sure 100% of the people in your CRM are getting followed up with. Yeah. And the numbers uh compared to the rest of the field have been extremely encouraging.

Jim Fitzpatrick:

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Um, I was listening to um uh uh Jarrod Kilway, who's one of your clients at Casa Auto Group and uh on another podcast, and uh and you know, they asked him on the podcast, how do you track all of this? What's the best tracking tool out there to know what's going on in this area of your dealership? And he right off the bat, you know, said Car Now.

Tim Cox :

Yeah, and well the great thing was that obviously was unsolicited, and and he called me and he said, Hey, we just talked about you because but but but the at the end of the day, facts not feelings. You know, what is actually working, and that's what we strive to. There's a lot of noise. How do you just make sure that what you're doing in your dealership is is uh is converting and closing as many dealers as possible. And I think the question was, you know, what is the highest converting lead source that you have? That's right. And uh and he looked it up in real time and uh and and said, Car Now, and we were very encouraged by that.

Jim Fitzpatrick:

Yeah, that's that's fantastic. Yeah, you you need more of that out there.

Tim Cox :

I do need more of that.

Jim Fitzpatrick:

You know, and and the thing is you guys have not really been out there touting the market in in AI, right? I mean, that's not something that you've been, you know, throwing your flag down on because of the fact that at the end of the day, you want the results more than anything.

Tim Cox :

I want the results. I I think uh I don't want to say we've been slothful, we've been thoughtful as far as developing AI because at the beginning, I mean, we know and there's been bugs with everything in AI and figuring out where we wanted to pinpoint and what we wanted to own, because at the end of the day, we wanted the lane that we were in, yeah, we wanted to dominate and be the best in that lane. Right. And that's the same thing with AI. AI is a good thing. Again, a lot of great AI companies out there, yeah, but how do we put that and weave that into the tapestry of what we do to make uh uh Micah's job so much easier? That's right. That's right.

Micah Rowland:

Yeah. Yeah, because you know, you said it best, tools don't sell cars, people do. That's what I'm saying. And that's that's the most important thing. So that's exactly right.

Tim Cox :

There was a comment I heard from um Matt, who owns a BDC um out in the space, uh, and he said, and it was beautiful, he in fact it was a post, and he said, I have handled 1.2 million phone calls this year. And not one time did someone yell in the phone demanding for AI.

Jim Fitzpatrick:

That's exactly right.

Tim Cox :

I mean, you think about it again, AI is great, we're building AI, but at the same time, when we really think about it, when you're on that customer service call and you're trying to click, click, click, click, at the end of the day, that's right, it's a beautiful partnership, yes, with AI, but getting it to the right person in the store.

Jim Fitzpatrick:

Yeah, there's no question about it. To your point, it is a tool. And uh and we still are in the early stages of all of this. I mean, every every vehicle or every car uh or every vendor out there that serves the retail automotive arena is still tweaking along the way, right? Nobody's got it nailed all the way to 100%, right?

Micah Rowland:

No, that's exactly right. And it's not it's more than just plug and play. It's got to be relevant to what you're trying to accomplish as a store. That's right. Yeah, if it's if it's if it doesn't represent what you're trying to accomplish, it's no good. Because everybody can just plug it into their system. Now I've seen it done a hundred times. It's got to be relevant to your goal.

Jim Fitzpatrick:

That's right, that's right. Speaking of goals, uh for somebody that's over variable ops over four different stores, talk to us about what some of your goals are in this area.

Micah Rowland:

So my goals overall between the four places I manage is just to make sure the communication to the customer is relevant and it can in turn be interpreted by management correctly. There's so many disconnects in the dealership, whether it's managing a service BDC or managing internet sales to to the sales desk or what have you. It's just all about making sure that customer message is communicated clearly and understanding what they're trying to accomplish. Right. Um and so when I go through the motions, whether it's vetting a vendor or training a salesperson, it's let's get down to why the customer called, discover that very early on, and then make that process for the customer. It's already hard to buy a car. It doesn't matter if AI is involved or not. Right. You know, what can we do to make that process easier? Because it doesn't have to be complicated. That's right. Yeah, that's right. And I think the part of the issue is there's so much stuff out there that the customer can tap into and that we as dealers can tap into. Sometimes it muddies the waters. So what can we do to make that process clean?

Jim Fitzpatrick:

Yeah, for sure. Um, Tim, as you know, uh Micah and people uh that hold Micah's positions at other auto groups, they want to sell cars. They want to work deals, they want to put appraisals on cars, they want to do everything that they can to support uh both variable ops and fixed ops. And sometimes you you you're in these conferences or you're in these conference rooms and you listen to these pitches and you're like, my God, I feel like I gotta be a programmer and I gotta know all that there is to know about this technology out there. Talk to us about the importance of support when you when you onboard a client and what you guys bring to the table .

Tim Cox :

In fact, I was I was just on with a dealer, small dealer in Maine this morning. And her problems are not the same problems that you know Patrick at Beaver Toyota deal with.

Jim Fitzpatrick:

N o, I'm sure it's not.

Tim Cox :

You know, I mean, I so so so that's therefore being able to listen uh more than you speak. Yeah. Um the the great part now as as Car now goes into its its 11th year, we have the incredible privilege to work with, like I said, some of the best operators. So there's probably there's not really anything that I haven't heard, uh, whether that's do you have a BDC, do you have an internet department, do you have just salespeople? And it's a small store. So I I like to, you know, I like to say you need to wrap your process around the product, yeah. Right for your people in the store. Right. So being able to pull the levers, being able to not just, you know, we're just gonna flip a switch and now you have, you know, now you have this software. You know, that's what happened in 2020 with digital retailing. You know, people were mandated to put these tools on their site, and everyone treated them like the field of dreams. If you build it, they will come. And and everybody's just gonna miraculously buy cars and no salespeople, and that's not the case. We have a passion for automobiles in this country. We want to smell it, feel it, get excited about it. That's right. And that's why salespeople are never going away. I'm sorry, they're just not. No. Most people still, even if they want to push it all the way online, they're still gonna want to have that human touch. So so I really believe that the service and being able to overcome and adapt and position your product around the situation with that particular dealer is why we have partnerships like we like we do here at Mike Rezi.

Micah Rowland:

That's one of the things we use digital retail for. You know, it's it's not just for the customer to put in their information so we can in turn have a have a channel to communicate. You know, we encourage and we train salespeople in our group to use that tool to its fullest advantage, which is, you know, so many times we were just talking about communication. There's a stop gap where someone answers the phone and a salesperson doesn't know the answer to a question or a BDC agent doesn't know, and it's I'll call you back. Yeah, that may be a good segue to maybe collect some information, but a tool like CarNow can easily start that conversation. You can have the whole conversation on the phone in that first take, which is what's the out-the-door price? Well, I can tell you real quick, what's the interest rate? Well, I can tell you. That's just what today's consumer wants. And and those are the questions that they want answered. If you can answer those quickly, whether the customer likes it or not, we can all agree that interest rates are still high, right? No one, no, no one no one's ever called me negotiating an interest rate. It's always what the price, what's the price? Right, right. So using a tool like that and training a salesperson to use it like that so that way that is more clear and the customer's expectations are set is is is a win across the board.

Jim Fitzpatrick:

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Um for the dealers that are listening right now, what do you want to leave them with in terms of, you know, they're they're they're uh as you know, they're bombarded with all of these different vendors. What should they be looking for? Or better yet, what kind of questions should they be asking of their vendors in this area?

Tim Cox :

Um are you going to be a partner? Everybody, you know, every you know, every slide, yeah, Steve Greenfield, which is obviously a friend of CBT News, uh, put together a composite of you know of the digital landscape, yeah, right? Yeah. And it's hundreds of companies, DMS, CRM, all these companies, and I open every presentation with that. Yeah. Everybody's Miss America on that sheet. Everybody is going to solve world peace and feed the hungry. But what happens when you're in the foxhole, you know, throwing grenades, trying to just sell cars every day. And at the end of the day, I just want to encourage uh dealers and and your listeners to lean in a little bit and maybe not listen to a lot of the noise, although AI is good, all these products are good, but is it going to make a difference? In fact, I've been given a guarantee. I will absolutely guarantee if we we have so much data now around what we do, I will absolutely guarantee if we don't raise uh the ROI in your store like we did uh here in all of our stores, then then don't pay us. I mean that's how bullish. That's how bullish um I hopefully that does doesn't come across pious, but I'm just saying it. We're confident if we do A, B, and C's, these are these are results.

Jim Fitzpatrick:

As a former manager of stores for many years, that's kind of what I want to hear from my vendor. If it ain't working, then don't don't pay us, you know, rather than well, you kind of tie it into a long-term contract, and even though we're not working for you, you're stuck with us. But yeah, to so to hear that, you know, from a co-founder of a company is is is pretty strong. Absolutely. That's exactly what we want to hear. So as we close out the segment, I appreciate all the time that you've given me. Um, and I'll and I'll start with you, Micah. How do you feel about the the last quarter that that we're in right now for 2025? There's been some headwinds, as you know. We dealt with tariffs and we've dealt with inventory issues and what have you, but how do you feel about closing out the year?

Micah Rowland:

I feel great. I mean, at the end of the day, tariffs, no tariffs, whatever you hear on the outside, people are still buying cars. Yeah. Yeah. And that's never gonna stop. So I think it's all about pivoting to finding where the customer is and meeting them there. Yeah. Maybe, maybe the road to the sale is two or three days longer than it originally was, or maybe it's a few weeks. You know, I think the follow-up game has to be strong because if if you're not prepared, what are you? Right. You know, that's that's exactly what I think. And and using a tool like CarNow to help that conversation is huge.

Jim Fitzpatrick:

Yeah, dealers can't afford right now to miss any sales opportunity. That's exactly right. Right. I mean, that that's really what it is. It sounds like CarNow built a safety net for that to ensure that there's no leakage when it comes to people that want to buy cars, right? Yeah. So Tim, talk to me. What what what are you what are you focusing on? What are you telling your clients to focus on as we as we try to close the year out strong?

Tim Cox :

Uh back to basics. Yeah. Back to basics. And and you know, I I again, same dealer, had a long conversation with her this morning. Um, you know, at the end of the day, dealers spend tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, depending on the store, on marketing and SEO and SEM and all this stuff to get people to come to their website. Um and people walk around unassisted and they leave. Yeah. Uh it's a travesty. And we just want to, you know, what I've been doing, in fact, in the past year and a half is been on the road more than I than I ever was uh up until you know when we started the company in 2000 you know, 15 and 16. Yeah. Uh just listening to dealers and pouring into dealers and coming up with solutions that that converts uh more their web customers, and then obviously with our even with our showroom tool, uh their showroom customers just to buy cars. Right. So it's just back to the basics, keep the main thing the main thing. And it's always, I've always said since in in the beginning, uh you can't sell a car without a conversation. That's right. And that's what we do. So as many conversations that we can have, and we tweak a little um on the back end, and we raise those uh those chat to lead numbers, and maybe even more importantly, uh that lead to close numbers. So that's where we're laser focused with every new dealer partner and existing dealer partners to make sure that number continues to rise. That's great.

Jim Fitzpatrick:

That's great. Micah Rowland, variable operations director from Mike Rezi Nissan and Tim Cox, who's the co-founder of CarNow. Thank you so much for joining me.