The best retailers know the craft. David Revere a previous Thor regional VP has been in Rv leadership for over five years. His contribution to one of the best Rv dealers in the US was widely respected by his industry peers and OEMs alike. Dave joins Frictionless to talk about retail processes and innovation. The minute of overtime will be well worth it as the on your way to the dealership or Gym series continues on Frictionless Dealer.
The best retailers know the craft. David Revere a previous Thor regional VP has been in Rv leadership for over five years. His contribution to one of the best Rv dealers in the US was widely respected by his industry peers and OEMs alike. Dave joins Frictionless to talk about retail processes and innovation. The minute of overtime will be well worth it as the on your way to the dealership or Gym series continues on Frictionless Dealer.
Welcome to.Frictionless Alright,
Speaker 2:welcome to frictionless Dave Revere and no one is the top gun of RV retail and a with quite a wholesale background as well from the OEM side. It's great to have you on our podcast and welcome from California, right,
Speaker 3:California. Yeah, thanks for having me, Todd Wilkins. I'm excited to be here, man.
Speaker 2:Hey, we're really excited to have you. I mean, obviously, um, there's been some crazy weeks and times in the business and yet, uh, for you to take the time, um, and referred by your peers as Maverick of top gun. It's great that the movie's coming out your sequel and the next, uh, two weeks. So it's exciting to have you on frictionless. And we're gonna talk about a couple things today in our 13 minutes, um, that have to do with CXP platforms, uh, literally the retail side of process and, um, and widget farms. And, uh, so we've got some exciting stuff a little bit. I want to just a little bit of background for some of the Marine dealers and other people who are listening to our show because your retail experience and processes are, are um, you know, not only cover our VI, but pretty much anything that a consumer would buy, um, that's next to their home, the next biggest purchase. Right?
Speaker 3:Yeah, you bet. I've, uh, I started out in the OEM side, Todd, I, I was a regional sales manager for Thor, California for five or six years. So I had dealerships across the 25 Eastern States that I helped, uh, service. And then from there I went over to Fleetwood motor homes for a few years old. The Bounder pace arrow South, their gas a products too, uh, the Southwest region. So, um, I've got a bunch of dealers that I know and I've gotten close to and manufacturers, uh, and[inaudible][inaudible] unique thing about my career is I jumped from that manufacturer OEM side over to the dealer side. The Opportunity came about 12 years ago. Uh, two manage an inventory of a large RV dealership here in Southern California. And so I manage the inventory for a few years and I had a background of a web design and technology that allow me to take over the marketing and advertising side of that too. So I started doing all their marketing, all their advertising. And when I started there, they didn't have email marketing. So there was no social media. I was there, there was nothing like that. So I've built that over the years and uh, okay. Got it. You know, it's super exciting to see where technology is coming in the RV space and the Marine space. Um, and the l andscape is g oing t o change, landscape's going to change big time.
Speaker 2:Well that's a, that's an awesome path you reinvented yourself from taking your wholesale knowledge to, uh, the retail side. And, you know, we were talking about, uh, you know, when we put this together about literally your experience in the process side and you know, CXP is kind of a, you know, a new buzzword in the industry because most people focus on CRM and the things that they hear of, uh, you know, all the different verticals. But a customer experience platform has now really risen in the RV side and you have had a lot of experience not only in the process of, you know, given that customer a great journey but getting their confidence to buy, by using the technologies and innovation that's out there. And, uh, so let's talk about a little bit about that because you've retailed thousands of RV units on a CXP.
Speaker 3:Sure, sure. Yeah. The, the, this, that side of the business is probably the most exciting part in that, um, back in the day RV dealers that the customer experience was, um, yeah, lacking. And it's taken a lot of time for dealerships, I think to understand that they have to service their customers if they want to keep them. And you know, you've got a customer that comes in and buys a little travel trailer from you and enjoys it. That customer is going to be with you for a long time. They're going to move up to a nicer travel trailer, then they're going to go up to a fifth wheel and then maybe they'll buy A class motor home from you and then maybe a gas diesel. I mean, you've got probably five sales from a young customer, young family that comes in. So you better service them. Well, are you going to lose them? And the technology available today allows you to connect with customers, allows you to, Really follow them through that sales cycle and take care of them throughout, make sure that their needs are met. And it's, it's incredible the contact that you can give these customers if you, u h, if you set it up the right procedures.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Dave, how important is it when you are able to re-market it to your own c ustomers so they don't get back in market and you literally are able to retain them in that CXP so that their confidence of you know, using behavioral technology, literally you get them before they go back a nd market and now you have a customer, like you said, y ou h ave five retail and 14-18 service turns from their first travel trailer. It becomes a lifestyle. And then because of the length of, u m, payments, u h, you know, the consumer can Lily upgrade to their fourth and fifth, b ut i nstead of equipment. So, you know, how important is that to grow the RV dealership by having good retention and getting your customers before they go back in-market?
Speaker 3:Right? So, so customers have a sales cycle. Like I was saying, you know, a customer that comes in and buys a small little trailer, you know, they're not going to want marketing materials on$350,000 diesel motor homes. They're just not there yet. Uh, conversely, if you've got a guy who owns a bus, uh, he doesn't want to see little class, C- motorhomes. So really this, the customer experience that you're talking about allows, allows you to tailor your message. It allows you to focus on that specific customer and their needs, their wants. And same thing with service. You know, you, you reach out to them, you know, their service schedule, you know what, uh, offers to send them. You don't want to send, uh, you know, oil change on a, some guy that, a lot of travel trailer, you know, it's just, he doesn't need to see those things. So you really have to, train the dealers. That's the tough part is to get them to shift their thinking and shift there, focus on just getting a sale and hoping they come back in. Uh, biggest tools that are available really, really require you to change your thinking and your procedures too. Um, allow a focus on the individual customer.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And I think that when it all integrates, when you get to payments, um, through technology, the same on your website, same in dynamic emails. And then when you personalize that through a CXP so that identifies your customer like their banking or even now Walmart, the grocery app or you know, Amazon, one of the fastest, most dominant retailers. It's growing. I think customers' behavior is trained by all these other retail experiences. So in the process, you know, cause literally, you know, you being top gun Maverick of the process of selling customers, keeping them happy but closing them and converting them to the financial statement. How big is that behavioral aspect of the CXP in, um, the process side of it?
Speaker 3:Well, it's invaluable. I mean, you can, you can function without him, without it at this time. But, uh, three to five years from now, if you want to compete in this marketplace, uh, in a Metro marketplace and, uh, uh, large, um, BTA that it's competitive, you better have the tools that allow you to reach and sell and service customers. And there's no way to do that without the technologies that are available today. You got to learn them. You've got to understand them. You've got to dive in deep, uh, or else you're going to fall behind. So I think it's imperative that, that you, uh, you move with the times, cause you might be able to function now, but three to five years from now, uh, if don't, if you don't keep up catch up and move ahead, you're going to be underwater.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And I think that's one of the unique things about, um, you know, the whole frictionless retailing side today is customers time is a major asset for people, especially when you get up into the motorized, uh, these buyers times more, you know, more important than anything. I mean, they want to make a smart decision. But, you know, we were talking about, you know, widget farms like over the time that, um, no RV people say, Oh, RV's, 10 years behind automotive marketing. And I'm literally an advocate for no way. We're right on their tail because the fact that this innovation and the technologies of the CXP integrating with the CRM and making it frictionless, we have attribution and conversion in our V because you can choose who your website provider is. An automotive OEM is telling you that. So, you know, Dave tapped out a little bit in the widgets, like when, you know, when you started back five years ago, you had all these different widgets that people did this, they had an app for that or a provider for this. How important is it that you get down to literally having a platform serve up all these, um, you know, CXP, uh, integrations for the client?
Speaker 3:Well, you know, Todd Wilkins, I think, I think again, I keep going to three to five years. If I look back three to five years ago, you had to pull all the widgets together because there was, there was nobody that did everything the best. So you might have a, company over here that was great at, u h, reputation management a nd one over here that had a good CRM one over here that did a website's great. U m, one over here that did t ax. There's so many different, u m, things that need to be incorporated into one tool, one central place. And I think going forward, we're almost there. I think there's some companies out there that are making huge strides in that, in that space. U h, eventually three, five years from now, there's g oing t o be some big, u h, some companies that h ave p ulled it all together and having all those tools under one, u h, dashboard is going to be incredible. You don't have to log out, log in, go to all these different spaces to, to, you know, get the, get the things you need done, done. You can do it all in one dashboard. And you know, being able to have a customer call up, pull up their sales history, be able to text them, be able to shoot them emails that, that are all the same, branding the same look, the same feel. Having that same message across the board is, uh, is going to be incredible. I mean, that's, that's where I see it. The widgets are going to right now, they're all over the place, but they're starting to consolidate. And I think that's going to be a good thing for the industry for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, Hey, I really appreciate you, um, you know, diving into this, obviously these are some serious topics, especially with dealers, you know, using less, uh, personnel and teammates tax acute for the customer side with what we're facing today. Um, in the coven journey of the last six, seven weeks, we have a lot of dealers that, um, you know, operating with 50, 60, 70% of their staff and some of them are actually surprising themselves on, um, with innovation, how they can convert and keep the customers on the rails to deliver and, you know, take that test to experience and deliver these units in people's driveways. I think that we're going to see service actually start to happen more where it's frictionless as well and save people time and they're willing to pay more for the convenience. So,
Speaker 3:yeah, no doubt. No doubt. I think, I think, you know, Todd, the, this Cobra 19 thing, um, obviously horrible pandemic. It's been, it's been terrible. But as any, uh, challenge, we make adjustments and we figure out ways to do things differently in order to succeed. And I think one of the things we're going to see and at dealerships, uh, especially RV dealerships, is we're going to see. People understand, dealerships understand how important the online spaces. There's a lot of dealers that do understand it, but even more now, once they pair back salespeople for two months and they had to learn how to manage things online and do deliveries at home for customers versus having them come in and adjust their business model, um, I think they're starting to see, well, Hey, why not, uh, why not expand on this and why not, uh, make this something that's part of our business model. Give the customers an option that they didn't have before. And I think we're just seeing, we're seeing that open up right now and it's kind of cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it really is way. Dave, I want to thank you. You're literally an innovator in the industry, yourself and a Maverick top gun. People are gonna pick up some, uh, great edge plays from, uh, this frictionless, um, series. And, uh, we appreciate you, uh, being on, and, uh, I want to wish you the best in your next couple of weeks of, uh, your endeavors and thank you very much for coming on.
Speaker 3:Hey Todd, I appreciate it. Thanks. Thanks a lot for having me on Frictionless. Talk to you soon. Cheers.