Retail Anywhere: Mark Boniol - Engineering an Amazon Experience

Introduction Quote, Mark Boniol: I love the term Retail Anywhere, because that's really where we got to go. And we know that's absolutely the next step in this evolution of what we're doing. So that at the end of the day, we're giving the customer a true Amazon like experience.

Greg Uland: Hi, I'm Greg Uland with Reynolds and Reynolds. Here with me today is Mark Boniol, dealer principal at Mark Dodge Chrysler Jeep. Today, we're going to talk about how his dealership is taking a Retail Anywhere approach when it comes to vehicle sales and F&I. Mark, thanks so much for taking some time to sit down and chat.

MB: Greg, I'm happy to be here. Thank you for having me.

GU: Of course. Of course. So let's dive right in and maybe we can start with your sales and F&I processes. Can you walk me through some of the challenges you were experiencing in sales and F&I specifically before you went to a more virtual mobile process?

MB: Well, when we started to become a digital dealership, we struggled a little bit because we took the sales team, the actual sales person who now is called a product specialist, and they're paid a flat fee for every car that they sell and they're more like a car concierge. So when we took them out of the negotiating process, OK, well, if the price is really strong to begin with and there's only two objections customers are going to have, it's either about the trade or the payment. If it's a trade, a sales manager comes in and brings data about that. If it's a payment, then we take them to finance and the finance manager closes the deal and then sells the product. Now, that was a struggle at first because to do both, how do I do all this and still make money selling my F&I products? That was the biggest part of the struggle.

GU: That makes sense and when you think back, even before moving to this sort of process that you have in place now that obviously you've ironed out over time. But thinking back, what really made you want to change and move to this kind of virtual process that you have in place?

MB: Well, the paradigm for me was gross was king. Average gross was such a close second. I almost couldn't differentiate, because of that wasn't right, all of my expenses were wrong percentages. And then volume was important, but a distant third. I stayed away from factory Kool-Aid. I didn't drink the volume Kool-Aid, and I protected my margins and made a lot of money doing that. The recession came and a funny thing happened. Bubba got a computer. And then the real surprising thing was how many elderly people got computers and learned how to use them. And I think it was a combination of needing to, but also the technology got more and more intuitive and they were able to catch on. So we come out the other side of the recession. I think this was already beginning in major metros, prior to the recession, but it was going nationwide like gangbusters coming out. And I watched a lot of second and third generation car guys who frankly were not very good at the old paradigm, who were selling a lot of cars. And they came from good families. I knew who they were. I knew there was no smoke and mirrors here. And then I saw my volume begin to plateau and then slightly dip. The problem was initially I didn't know what to change, much less how to change it. So we had to learn about digital marketing. We had to learn about analytics. We hired people. We got the right consultant in. We began to find some measurable because if I can measure it, I can improve it. And we began to do a little better with this. But I didn't stop there because a couple of things occurred to me. One was, if we're in this digital world and it's this intuitive, it became easier and easier and easier for consumers to find the product. In fact, a customer can find a product just as fast as I can. By the time a customer came in off our lot, they had two quotes on the same car by the time they hit the closing booth. So you can't get that genie back in the bottle. And we realized we better change because we're getting outsold by guys who really weren't that great at selling. And we better figure this out even if it costs us a little money in the short run so that we can make more money in the long run. And then on the far end of that spectrum was us getting to the point of realizing we need to open a virtual dealership. We actually have two dealerships and one is our bricks and mortar dealership. The other is our virtual dealership. They have separate marketing budgets. They have separate marketing campaigns. They don't have separate prices. They all need the same price. But our latest thing, two and a half months ago, we actually separated finance into traditional finance and virtual finance.

GU: So maybe we can dive into that a little bit. It sounds like you went into this digital, virtual world quite a long time ago. So you're a little ahead of the curve. So you probably had a leg up on a lot of folks, especially in the last year, who were almost forced into it. But from your perspective, and you mentioned separating the finance office, I'm curious how have you been able to or what have you done to not just meet those customer expectations? You mentioned they want to be able to shop on their phone or they're going to price shop you, and you had to come to those realizations. But beyond that, how have you kind of been able to focus on your other business goals, most notably remaining highly profitable or even growing on the opportunity in this virtual world?

MB: Well, I looked at the first year and a half, the first 18 to 24 months was pretty rough and I sacrificed a lot of profit. I was still profitable, but I sacrificed a lot of profit. And I looked at it as an investment and an open point. I mean, if I was awarded an open point, you've got to make an investment there. And I looked at this as that. That was good thinking because the last two plus years I've made the most money I've ever made, sold the most cars I've ever sold, and had the most fun I've ever had.

GU: That's great to hear. And then from your perspective, thinking about that, how has Reynolds and our Retail Anywhere approach, how has Reynolds helped you in what you're trying to accomplish?

MB: Well, first of all, docuPAD was interactive with the customer, great for compliance. Very easy for the customer to see and choose rather than a manager sitting behind a computer screen telling them what he's got to offer them, or even coming out with a paper menu. The electronic worked very well. We piloted with you on docuPAD Remote. And that is fantastic because that is true virtual. A customer across Zoom with docuPAD Remote can see the screen, see the finance manager. It's just like they're sitting in the finance office. Everyone can see each other, everyone's talking to each other, they can see the screen, and they can point and click. And that's been a wonderful solution. I love the term Retail Anywhere because that's really where we got to go. That's the next thing. To have a true virtual finance office, we need to be open 24/7, and we need to answer the customer in real time, 24/7, with the same standards we would during the business day. To do that is going to require us to be able to operate from anywhere, not just at the dealership. So I think Retail Anywhere is important for the consumer that they can conduct retail business 24/7, but also to the dealer who's trying to serve the customer. And we know that's absolutely the next step in this evolution of what we're doing. So that at the end of the day, we're giving the customer a true Amazon like experience.

GU: That's great. Some would say, and some have said that, that moving to this kind of remote and virtual environment, it takes away some of the control, and it reduces some of those processes that have been in place at dealerships to help them be profitable and to work the customer through a sales process. What are your thoughts on how this virtual environment has impacted dealership control? And is it important and how has Reynolds helped with that problem?

MB: We've certainly seen tremendous sign of that, when we trust the customer, for instance, with the documents, we're willing to deliver every document the customer's going to sign to their computer and so they can show their attorney, their CPA. We have nothing to hide. We're not trying to do any slight of hand with our customers. We don't need to do that. And so I think when we are transparent and we trust them, they trust us a whole lot more. And we've certainly seen that. And that if they trust us, that leads to profitability.

GU: Trust is very important, especially on those large transactions, like buying a car. So can we talk a little bit, Mark, you're into this transition now, right? And you're embracing this digital world in this virtual selling environment, leveraging tools obviously from Reynolds to help facilitate it. What results have you seen? What impact has it really had on your business?

MB: Well, over the last three years, I'm up 126%. At the end of the first quarter of 2021, will be up 89% over 2020. So it is explosive growth, and I'm so glad I did it. It didn't start out that way. You have to be patient because you end up having to question everything you thought you knew about the car business. Reynolds has helped us with that, especially with docuPAD Remote. docuPAD is a fabulous tool; customers love it. It's very compliant. And when we can do that remotely, it just opens up new worlds to us. And as dealers, we have found that our product has not been commoditized, but the price has been. And there's no difference in a RAM from me and a RAM from someone in Dallas or Houston. But so what's going to differentiate us well is price and. And so we've got to do things to make ourselves more efficient. Reynolds helps us do that. There are things that Reynolds helps us to do in accounting, and there are things that Reynolds helps us to do in parts and service, all of which help us be more efficient. And as our efficiency grows, so does our productivity. If we have more capacity, somehow we seem to attract more to ourselves.

GU: So I'm curious just to put a fine point on going back to focusing on that front end of the store, selling, and F&I online, those are huge increases you mentioned in volume gains. What about profitability? Have you seen an increase in those, specifically those remote deals after moving to some of the software tools inside of the Retail Anywhere platform?

MB: Absolutely. We tracked it because you're going to get some employee pushback. If you've got a finance manager who's been making a lot of money, most of them are not belligerent, but they're very reluctant to change. And you notice that they don't embrace the new stuff because what they've been doing has been working all these years. I would liken it to, I like to snow ski. And when I started snow skiing in the late 70s and the 80s, my skis were way longer than they are today. And they were straight. They didn't have parabolic shape to them. The equipment has changed so much that you have to relearn to ski, but it's much easier to ski today. It was so awful when I first learned. If you can live through the first three days, great sport. You just got to live through those first three days. And I think it's a little bit like that. The technology has changed so much that it actually works better. So we tracked it. And if we tried to just tell a customer on the telephone versus doing docuPAD Remote, we found right at five hundred dollars difference per retail and that's real money. The other thing I was going to say is that we think the CRM tool FOCUS is much more aligned with the digital world. And what we need to do, it's the next step in evolution. And we think that we have more to learn about that at the dealership level. These are digital customers, and they'll slip through our hands like sand if we're not careful, and we think FOCUS is a very good tool to help us with that.

GU: So, Mark, to wrap up, there's a lot of vendors out there, a lot of providers out there that can do different things for you. What made you choose Reynolds? Why did you want to work with Reynolds to attack this world of digital retail, virtual selling, and Retail Anywhere?

MB: I've actually used Reynolds and Reynolds for thirty years. And I think Reynolds is known in the marketplace for having the most sophisticated solutions. And like even in my recent meetings with your product folks, I am very excited that you're staying in front of this thing and that you are developing. We're just right there together on the thoughts of where this is going so that we can deliver a seamless experience. Because there is a lot on F&I now with the regulation that's out there and that may get worse, probably will. And there's a lot of burden on finance. And so the digital things that you have now will make us more efficient per customer, because in this digital world, there is no doubt F&I is more important than ever before and we need the tools to help them be more efficient and to help make it a more pleasant and transparent experience for the customer. But also the finance manager who is so critical to what we're doing. There's less steps for them. It becomes more simple and they can spend more time helping educate the customer. And the solutions that you're giving us are really helping the customer understand better what we're trying to sell them and see the value in it.

GU: Great. Well, thanks for sharing. Definitely appreciate that, Mark. And I really appreciate you taking some time today and hopping on and chatting with me. Definitely appreciate it.

MB: You bet. Take care.

GU: For more information, visit reyrey.com/retailanywhere. Thanks for watching, everyone. Have a great day.