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Steven Apicella is a man on a mission.

He’s out to influence the automotive industry and specifically the way that F&I has worked in the past. You can hear the passion in his voice, how much he cares for both the dealer and the customer. His company, Strategic DX - Your Dealer Experience, consolidates and tracks your third-party offerings in a way that keeps the customer connected to the dealership. Steven talks about his experience coming up in the automotive world and what sparks him to create change.

What we talk about in this episode:
0:00 Intro with Michael Cirillo, Paul J Daly and Kyle Mountsier.

3:39 Paul and Steven realize they share similarities because they both started out in PDR (Paintless Dent Repair), and have both moved into other automotive spaces from there.

8:03 One day on a job, Steven started to realize that there was a huge disconnect between what’s being sold as an F&I product and how it’s actually being administered.

14:57 The disconnect between sales and service in automotive is something that Steven realizes is going to result in a poor customer experience until those gaps are filled.

“I don't think everything's broken in our industry. I'm not that guy. I think there's a lot of great things happening in our industry. Amen. But there are disconnected parts. And one of the disconnected parts is a really critical vacancy, which is, the distance between sales and service is, as an industry, we can refine the hell out of all the sales processes. And we do and we should, and we can refine the hell out of all the service processes. And we do and we should, but until you could correct that gap in between, we're always going to get what we get. Yeah. And that's what we're focused on is how do you take a one time transaction and turn it into a lifetime relationship, everybody desires it, but the industry has lacked processes to be able to fulfill it.”

17:48 What is the real mission? Is it to sell cars or to create lifelong relationships? Steven has an idea: Start a “Why Return Here” campaign.

“Is it our mission to only sell a car and maybe an F&I product or to also earn a recurring customer? And there's not a person in our industry that wouldn't say the latter is desired. But that's not what we're earning right now. We're really good at selling cars, whether we have inventory or not. But we're not really great at retaining customers thereafter. And I believe part of it is every single dealership has a “Why buy here” proposition. Every single one. How many executed a “Why return here” proposition? That's part of the vacancy that exists right now.”

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