[Music] this is CBT News special coverage of the 2023 NADA show hi everyone Jim Fitzpatrick right here at the convention at NADA 2023 in Dallas Texas thank you so much for joining me today I've got I'm joined with Kevin singerman who's the CEO of autofy and Carrie wise who is the CMO of Auto 5. thank you so much for joining us folks thanks for having us sure how's the show going for you the uh the show's great I mean I think there's great energy on the floor it's very well attended from all leve
ls of oems lenders and dealers who are Partners so we're excited to be here sure sure for people that are not as familiar with your brand as we are tell us a little bit about autophy so autify is a Commerce platform for dealers to be able to sell cars in a digital consumer friendly transparent experience and we power that with a network of uh lenders that create an automated uh transparent Finance process okay okay and this is something that every dealer right now is on the Forefront of their mi
nd right in terms of digital retailing trying to make sure that the consumer has a frictionless experience right talk to us about that Gary well yeah you hear a lot about digital retailing and it's been all the buzz over the last five years really yeah but I think what sets out a fire part is the financing piece the innovation of financing and you can't have an end-to-end transaction without financing that's right that's right that's right so for us uh we're more than digital retail because we t
hink of ourselves as not just Commerce online right but also in the showroom yeah and for us one of our big Focus areas at NADA is this is these showroom platforms and take power of digital retailing online and putting it in the hands of sales people yeah that's that's that's key what we saw during covet obviously in the last couple of years is a number of people that said okay we got to be they have a digital presence right and because digital retailing modern retailing depend on what you call
it became so popular and those first formative months of of covid but at the end of the day we are now realizing that consumers kind of want a hybrid of the two right yeah we found that to be the case that's right you know I think we went through a really interesting cycle beginning at covid it was hard to get to stores so there was a wave of purchases and enablement of the website to service a customer the past year was really challenging for the industry right not a lot of inventory right and
uh and I think because of that um dealers were I would say sometimes less dependent on their outer store tools when they know when they have very few assets customers had to come in too right now we're moving back to environment more inventory on the floor and so what the retailers are saying telling us it's like hey I've had a year where everyone's been buying for me now I got to sell cars again right help my staff with the tools to be able to do that we're back in the car business right and th
at's what dealers are concerned with yeah and I think efficiency is profitability and we think of of course you want to enable consumers to shop online do as much or as little as they want but what about your sales team there's a lot of inefficiency when it comes to the sales process right the back and forth to the desk sales people aren't empowered even the fni putting our consumers through that right that's exactly it and what we see from some of our partners who are empowering their sales peo
ple with our technology in the showroom is that whether this is a green pea or someone really experienced with technology everybody's smarter right and you can first handle a first pencil yeah and and discuss numbers with the customer without having to wait at the desk to get a number the technology is that accurate right to be able to empower people to have those conversations that's fantastic so uh Kevin you recently announced how you continued to expand and scale your partnership with Santand
er tell me about that sure I I think what makes audify really unique and how we approach this problem is that we believe creating a great experience for the dealer is innovation of both the retail side and finance side and so what we're doing with santanderers are really helping them digitize them as a auto lender to be really easy to do business with for the dealer in two primary ways first is if they need to restructure deals you know understand this specifications of more down payment more te
rm they can easily do it at their fingertips now with our Platformers and having to pick up the phone and and call someone on the other line right which makes a much more faster process to the sale the other part is up front uh if a customer walks in the store or now goes to a branded Marketplace that they've created is the ability to pre-qual a customer against all the inventory that the dealer has on their lot so they know right away in an instant what cars that they've been approved for throu
gh the exact payment that could uh work for them in the dealer nice that's very nice so uh so in terms of this new this new this new consumer or customer experience focused on payment shopping financing is often at the end of the process what's the value in pulling it the finance forward so I I think when like we think about one of the reasons we we started this business and you know we're we're from a financial technology background that's been doing this in other markets like mortgage consumer
lending Etc is all about removing friction from the finance process which in the automotive industry is typically at the end that's like the last thing you do that's right and uh you know other than price negotiation it's it's typically ranked as like the worst part of the experience right so we we said how do we create an experience we can surface that higher up yeah in the consumer shopping experience in a way that works with the dealers or on the lenders that they want to do business with ri
ght all their markups and flats but but to be able to do that in a way that it's very easy for a customer to sort of navigate what is the right deal for them right well in our experience enables the customer to get an instant institution in 60 seconds for multiple lenders and that scares dealers right that might think a dealer might say no I don't want that level of transparency automation because I'm not in control okay what if the numbers aren't accurate well for us you know relative to our ot
her competitors we're we're Penny perfect we are one of the most accurate in the business that's great um it's controlled by the dealer right so their their markups right their lenders their decision and criteria so it's very important for us to enable a transparent experience but it also to be controlled by the dealer where they're selling cars through the platform the way they would normally sell cars the second part is profitability right there's a concern that well if I do business this way
if I enable my sales people to use their technology in the showroom or if I enable customers to do it online I'm going to lose money and we recently looked at the backend profitability on auto fide deals versus Auto modify and we found that modified deals have two hundred dollars more profit than non-autifi deals than the liquor costs idea right right that's 200 it doesn't sound like a lot but when you add that up or crossing the number of course that's you I'll take 200 as a retailer you know a
nd add that to the bottom line and also now just the 200 but the customers experience a faster experience that's right that's right which means we're going to get more repeat customers they're going to typically have them come back to the dealership for service which as you know we suffer from that greatly and uh because how many people buy a car from a dealership and every dealer thinks oh they love us they're going to come back and buy the next car not necessarily yeah that's right that might
be driving home going that's the last time we're buying a car there right right so it's important that there's Technologies like this yeah I mean I I think you know we've got a long history of doing this we started the county about seven years ago and like as like one of the early uh Pioneers here when everyone thought oh I'm going to be transparent gross profits are going to go down yes right yes and so you know it took a while for the industry to start to adopt the products to actually realize
if I'm transparent I create trust with the customer and they have a higher inclination to do Finance with me that's right to protect the vehicle more and actually it's a better more profitable way of doing business right and more refer Ral referrals is you know when somebody has a great experience what do they do they tell all their friends and family oh you got to go to XYZ Motors because you know it was I was in and out of there in no time they made it easy they they told me it was going to b
e 452 21 a month and guess what it was 452 21 a month right yep and that's got to be a refreshing change for for consumers we were just at one of our stores hello Auto Group and one of the things they talked about was that it enables them actually to recruit from a wider set of keys because a lot of their employees don't come from Automotive yeah they've worked in Amazon warehouses and hair salons and in professions that you wouldn't necessarily think would make them be good at selling cars but
they're selling 30 cars a month or more because the technology is guiding them through a collaborative first pencil sure and they're building that trust and they're they're able to lock in the yes earlier in the process than the back and forth that we typically sure talk to us about some of the other showroom uh companies I should say companies that are selling showroom platforms out there and the challenges what what what's what's the real deal there yeah I think you know I spoke about accuracy
and that is a big one yeah um there's a lot of digital retail companies that claim to have technology that works online and in the showroom online you can get away with some inaccuracy because the customer is going to be online that's a lead in essence for the dealership but when you're powering your showroom process and you're giving this platform to your sales people to actually have discussions and negotiate yeah it has to be right that's right and so for us one of the things that we've had
we've received feedback on is we're accurate but but the other the second part is that we're flexible that our platform can work with a store a one-price store right it can work with our traditional store where there is management involved it can work in any process and it's not linear because customers don't shop linear right so if they want to start on the trade they want to discuss the payment wherever they want to start it's flexible to work in any experience and our dealers tell us they lik
e that because they don't it's not a one-size-fits-all and I can totally see where that would be able you'd be able to bring in a different type of sales associate one that doesn't want the confrontation one it doesn't want to be the traditional car sales person but it's got a tool like that as to your point that guides them through that's right I mean so you know as an owner I don't need to find the best sales person out there right I need to find the best customer service person I can set the
rules of the platform and guide them through a deal that works for me yeah well the F and I direct we haven't mentioned them at all but there's a lot of times some hesitance from them like are you are you replacing my job and the answer is no um that you know our customers may come in and they may receive a decision and it's a funded deal we put it right into Route One or dealer track okay but there's still opportunities to sell products yeah right our average customer will choose two products o
r so on their own but our F and I directors now have a funded deal yeah in front of them and the ability to sell Extra Value so we see it as not a replacement to F and I but giving them the ability to do more and to spend their time on valuable things it's actually an enhancement definitely it's an enhancement yeah absolutely and if the dealer doesn't have these types of tools like you're talking about they're going to get left behind you know as the industry go gets back to kind of normalizing
such a normalizing situation where you know cars are coming back on the lot you're discounting these vehicles now all of a sudden every dollar profitability actually counts before last two years was like shooting fish in a barrel and your dealers know what I'm talking about but it's true I mean it really was so now dealers need these kinds of of I mean these these platforms are going to help them be more efficient do more if less like that is the theme right now yeah across the world that's righ
t you know how do I sell more cars with like fewer people and use technology to be able to support that well and the market when we look at what's happening or not right now with interest rates Rising yeah financing is going to become more critical for the customer that's right and understanding what they can afford and so whether we're working with our dealers we're the worker with lenders like Santander oems the idea of prequel and giving consumers tools to feel better about moving forward wit
h the purchase experience is exactly where we're at in this market that's fantastic so um how is autofy uniquely positioned to help the entire industry going forward I know you touched on a number of things already but just kind of in these last moments what would you what was your point I I I I'd say it's the combination of retail Innovation and lender Innovation coming together okay right most cars are Finance right uh and we can't achieve what's possible in this market uh around Roundup makin
g more digital more efficient a better way to run the business uh if you can't being broke together and I think what's what's important is that we respect how a dealer wants to do business it's not a one size it's all right and make it really flexible for how they want to run their store and just be able to change the technology around that sure do you want to add to that yeah I think for us you know outside of working with dealers um the idea that we're working with all these entities within Au
tomotive right with oems with lenders with dealers with marketplaces out there who are using our apis that's really important because the transaction involves all of these entities and I think what's been challenging in terms of enabling digital and enabling a real transaction is that we're only focused on certain entities and not the entire ecosystem and autofy sits in the middle of that that ecosystem Kevin singerman CEO of autofy and of course Carrie wise CMO of autofy thank you so much for s
pending some time with us here at the CBT stage love to have you back in maybe in the studio in Atlanta do a follow-up because these are the kinds of solutions that we want to be you know featuring with our dealers because it's going to be a unique 2023 as dealers try to navigate through it and it's Solutions like this that we want to be bringing them so thank you so much thank you thank you for having us thanks for watching our special coverage of the 2023 NADA show ing the number one most watc
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