charity thank you so much for joining us
today on the go sokal podcast
thanks for having me so why don't we
start off with you just telling me a
little about you
and your background and what you what
you do here at socal okay perfect
so um for the last two years before i
joined socal
i worked with a data mining company it's
auto alert
and i was an international trainer and
went all over the united states and
canada and trained
dealerships um you know i would be there
for two days four days however long that
they needed me there
depending on how long it took to get
that store off the ground and
running on auto alert um
before that i worked inside dealerships
and all aspects of the stores
awesome so what do you do here at socal
so socal
i am one of the dealer process coaches
we go out to the dealerships and we
train
on different aspects of the dealership
whether it's being in your bdc
department or
data mining for instance awesome so you
mentioned data mining and i know that is
a pretty popular
um i guess software that a lot of
dealerships are using nowadays so i'm
sure most of our listeners probably know
what that is but can you tell everybody
what data mine is
sure so datamon takes a snapshot of
the car that you're driving right now
and it lets us know where you're at
um how many miles is on it um where
you're at in your purchasing cycle of
that vehicle what a data mining tool
does is it actually um it shows us how
we can put you into a brand new vehicle
and possibly lower or keep your payments
the same
data mining also helps the salespeople
with their customer retention as well
so um it's a really great tool the main
thing is
is that dealers are having a hard time
with
the training aspect on it um teaching
the salespeople on how to use it
where to use it when to use it and
if they're not using it you know it just
goes to the wayside
and they lose their roi on it how is it
used in a dealership like what's the
process of
how you would find that customer and you
know up them to a newer vehicle
absolutely so a customer comes into the
service drive
or they could be at home when we're
making the phone calls
the customer's information gets pulled
through
into the software and we have a snapshot
already of
what the customer drives how many miles
are on it depending on
the server the last service visit or the
current service visit
and it lets us know what we can put
well we can put that customer in what's
on our lot right now with using our
inventory that we have
right now right or um
another way a dealer uses it is instead
of going to the auction
right and they can get their um
help with their pre-owned inventory and
get more cars
off of the lane in your service lane to
help with their used car inventory as
well
so i know you just mentioned about
pre-owned inventory um and i know
you know right now given the situation
with the plants being closed a lot of
new inventory
you know it's been not coming in as much
dealerships as
typically they're used to this time of
year so can you touch maybe a little bit
more
on about why this is so a good way to
build up that pre-owned inventory that
you might be needing right now
absolutely and actually being out a lot
of dealers even their used car inventory
is getting low as well
so whenever you're getting a car out of
your service lane
you already know you know how many oil
changes it had you know when the brakes
have been done
you know who's driving the car you know
the story of the car a little bit
right so why not get it out of your
service lane and be able to have the
story behind that car
to be able to tell a person that's
interested in the vehicle
the story behind the vehicle and get it
out of your service line
well and i'm also assuming that can save
a dealership a little bit of money as
well
absolutely auction fees are really high
right now
and it will definitely save a lot on
your auction fees
so how would you go about monitoring
those sales i'm sure like you mentioned
the roi so how do you make sure that you
know you're getting
that roi back um well is what you have
match back reports a lot with the
software depending on what software
you're using
whether it being automotive mastermind
perfect prospect auto alert any of those
should be able to provide you
roi and a matchback report as well so
would you consider data mining pretty
effective for dealerships if they use it
correctly
absolutely if i was to run to run a
store today i would have
some form of data mining in my store and
i would require
sales people to use data mining so
if dealerships you made a comment that a
lot of dealerships you know
are paying for the software but they're
not taking full advantage
of this program so if dealerships are
paying for it then why aren't they using
it
well because you have a lot of
dealerships have a lot of turnover
um and it's all about training
right so if you don't know you don't
know what i do is i go in
and i do a lot of trainings with the
salespeople i have a theory no sales
person left it behind
no matter where they're no matter if
they're using the product or they're not
right yeah i want them to be able to
find their customers in that
data mining tool because if there's a
chance that they do
use it or they want to use it then they
have the knowledge to be able to use the
tool
um so that's one thing is i'm a big
advocate about
training your sales people training your
exchange coordinators
um just training getting them the
training that they need
so can you give us um you know some tips
and tricks um
to get the most out of your data mining
software um you need to be in it every
single day and i require whenever i'm
training
salespeople i want them to make 10 phone
calls out of the
data mine to every single day and if you
get 10 calls out of the data mine
tool um from your sales people then
you're going to get deals out of it
so can you maybe give us like a real
world example like how a salesperson
would use this when somebody
comes into the dealership sure
absolutely what kind of car you dropped
um i have a ford escape okay so um
great car by the way thank you um
absolutely
so if you are bringing your car into
service drive for an oil change or
anything like that
let's say you've had your car for two
two and a half years yep okay
perfect so um what the service
department
does is they write you up in an ro which
is a repair order
the repair order sends an alert to the
software that i'm comfortable with using
and it gives an alert to the salesperson
saying hey
katie's here with her ford escape right
so at that point it gives them all a
disorientation
of what you have what you're driving how
many miles are on your car
and it also tells you what we can flip
you over into to keep your payments
around the same
or possibly go up no more than 10
on payments oh wow yes so at that point
that sales person would come out and
talk to you and let you know
with a form and show you hey katie
here's what we can do for you
we can keep you at the same payment but
put you into a brand new vehicle and
keep your payments the same
wow that's that's pretty interesting
they can actually do that it's
really a wonderful product and data
mining
is something that i would use in any
store that i ever
ran so charity thank you so much for
joining us today
on the go socal podcast we really
appreciate you being here um and if
people
want to learn more um and get more
information you can always check us out
on gosocal.com absolutely
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