Wisco Weekly

By reverse engineering how virtual world sellers operate in the real world, automotive retailers can learn the best way to hack into the customer experience. Professor David Bell analyzes this transition in his book Location Is Still Everything. Formerly a professor of marketing at Wharton Business School, Bell explains how GRAVITY (Geography, Resistance, Adjacency, Vicinity, Isolation, Topography, You) are the ultimate key indicators on how virtual world sellers succeed in the real world.

Episode #47 shapes out to be a book review by Dennis and Kelly as they uncover some key concepts like preference minority, proximity effect, similarity effect, and BOPS (buy online, pick up in store).

Buy book on Amazon.

Learn more about David Bell.

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Happy Fall, Happy Q4!

Growth and development are on the horizon at Wisco Weekly. With the upcoming Automobility LA conference and LA Auto Show, we have a newly-appointed correspondent who will be joining the show to share greater insight into vehicle automation. An industrial designer by day and host of the podcast, Boost Booze and BBQ, Andy Ace is our resident automation expert. Tune in to get to know Andy!

Also on episode #46, Dennis and Kelly take a couple calls: one from a mother who wants to know how to guide her high school daughter to get involved in the automotive industry, and second, from a customer who is needing to make an argument to a dealer.

Automation Correspondent:

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Yes, there are dealerships with beautiful looking showrooms. Yes, dealerships are starting to have more product experts than salespersons. Yes, coffee and food are available while waiting for your car at any dealership. But, what is rare to find is an underlying connection to how all those touch points of a dealership make the customer feel welcome. Sounds easier said than done. According to Ephraim Barcelo, General Manager of John Elway’s Crown Toyota, it takes the “slight edge.”

Featured guest:

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When you earn a dollar, there is a sense of gratification that you are on the right journey. When you emigrate from South Africa to Newport Beach and earn a dollar, magnify that gratification 100-fold. Malcolm Phillips of Phillips Auto worked his tail off to learn and thrive in the independent dealer space. From advertising in Autotrader the magazine to now showcasing his digital showroom, his openness to change is a direct result of his street hustle from the days in South Africa. But his secret sauce in his dealership operation is not selling cars, rather it stems from something else.

Have a listen and enjoy!

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“Customers are always right, until they’re not,” says co-host Kelly Cruz.

In episode #43, we return to the scene of Regan Motors in Thousand Oaks, California. Independent dealerships often face the brunt of social media reviews because customers can still be high maintenance to a dealership operation where the Owner is the GM is the Sales Manager is the Finance Manager is the Vehicle Inspector. However, leave it to Garrett Regan to use technology to add a virtual staff member to his dealership.

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Forget the mindset you need to have to start a dealership. Rather, think about the practical elements like what processes do you have in place to serve the customer and make your dealership as efficient as possible. Owner and dealer executive, Garrett Regan, took his background in racing combined it with his commitment to the community, and formed his independent dealership in Thousand Oaks, California. He is part of a new generation of owners to start a dealership, and find the middle ground between the 80s car culture and the millennial generation’s influence on car buying.

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Get some life experience after college, they say.

My guest today has taken the road less traveled. He did not take time off to get some life experience. What he did, he went from college to starting his own company.

Erik Nachbahr is the President and Founder of Helion Automotive Technologies & Helion Trucking Technologies. After graduating from Loyola University in Maryland, Erik shortly thereafter started Helion, an end to end solution to handle any and all demands an automotive business needs in order to operate their information technology.

Helion services more than 650 automotive and heavy-duty trucking dealerships, and 28K end users. The company handles an average of 300 help desk calls everyday and resolves more than 6K IT issues per month.

Erik was a finalist for Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year 2017 Award which recognizes entrepreneurs who are excelling in areas of innovation, financial performance, and personal commitment to their business and community.

To that end, he also is a Board of Director for the Family Tree, an organization in Maryland which supports the prevention of child abuse, and helps build strong families to improve society.

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In an industry where selling translates to more cars and more money, what often gets sacrificed is the customer experience.  Having attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, owner of Honda of Downtown Los Angeles, Joe Shuster, takes a different approach to how his sales operation works. While there are other elements about his operation that make it go smooth, complimentary to it is how he applies what he learned in acting school to the car business.

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Five words can change the landscape of how a local retail operation thrives in the Los Angeles market – If Google Ran My Dealership. These are the words of a thought experiment the owner of Honda of Downtown Los Angeles reflects on regularly about his dealership operation. Joe Shuster, a NY transplant, purchased bankrupt Honda of Downtown Los Angeles in 2011. Later this year, he is expected to open a 210,000 square foot vertical showroom that will cement his legacy as a Dealer Principal in the competitive LA market. How did he get to this point, and how will he continue to deliver for his employees, customers, and the community at large…by presupposing if Google ran his dealership.

This is Part I of a two-part series. Subscribe and receive notification for Part II.

Honda of Downtown Los Angeles

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As with most endeavors in life, you fail more than you succeed, but when you do succeed, it becomes the best drug-induced experience of a lifetime. With forty episodes into Wisco Weekly, I’ve tweaked and tweaked and modified and modified to reach milestones that strengthen the value that listeners are taking away from this podcast.

With the introduction of season 4, Wisco Weekly has found its mark and is “going long” to influence and impact the customer experience at dealerships through sharing the voices of dealer executives, spotlighting automotive technologies, and inspiring the next best automotive startup. Coming up in what will be a never-ending season, you’ll begin to hear from dealer executives. They will be sharing how their operation aligns with the customer experience. Also, listen to past episodes and you’ll get some insight into technologies that are in place to support a dealership’s operation.

Dealers are entrusting that their processes will give them the slight edge in winning over customers. And when you bet on yourself and win, you win big and take the house!

Stay tuned for all the great guests coming in Season 4 which starts on Wednesday, August 15!

A big thank you to the Wisco Weekly team that helped produced this coming season, including our co-host Kelly Cruz, producer Craig Castos, and designer Wrik Sen.

Subscribe to Wisco Weekly on any popular podcast app!

Cheers!

Dennis Wisco