When Yossi bought a new General Motors vehicle, he got hit with multiple messages from the dealer and the automaker that clearly weren't coordinated, and Aaron Baldwin says that's not a one-off. He estimates that coordination between dealers, automakers, and vendors is maybe 10% effective today, and argues that a bad car buying experience doesn't start in the showroom; it starts with the very first ad a shopper sees. Aaron Baldwin is the President of Mobility Global Sales Solutions, the division that brings Automotive Mastermind, MarketScan, and Polk under one roof. He started out selling cars and working deals at Asbury Automotive Group in the mid-2000s, was the founding technical leader at CarNow in the early days of online car buying, and now oversees a data operation that draws on 100 years of vehicle registrations from all 50 states and roughly 7 billion payment calculations every month. He speaks candidly about why dealers are drowning in too many tools, why he believes the franchise model is here to stay, and why the industry's fragmentation is both its biggest challenge and its biggest opportunity.
He explains:
◼ Why dealers juggling as many as 40 vendors don't need another login, and how plugging data into the tools they already have beats adding new ones
◼ How Mazda, Audi, and Volkswagen are funding private loyalty offers that keep the automaker, the dealer, and the customer on the same message
◼ Why putting fees in your inventory feed doesn't solve the problem, and how a free tool landed on about 800 dealerships in two weeks
◼ Why buying a car is far harder for AI agents to automate than returning an Amazon package, and where AI actually belongs in the showroom
◼ Why answering a customer's first email still trips up stores nearly 20 years after he fought the same battle at Asbury
Topics:
00:55 OEM And Dealer Messages Collide.
02:05 Disparate Pricing Confuses Customers.
03:25 OEM Doesn't Know Dealer Discounts.
04:15 Fixing This Takes All Three Parties.
07:00 Not Another Tool, Integrate The Data.
11:20 100 Years Of Registration Data.
13:30 Fragmentation Is The Real Problem.
16:00 Handoffs Are Not Happening.
18:20 Coordination Is Only 10% Effective.
23:40 Get Into Something Emotional Like A Car.
26:30 Bad Experiences Start At First Message.
27:20 Agents Can Answer Every Email Question.
31:10 Fragmentation Is The Biggest Opportunity.
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3. @spgmobility – Mobility Global Sales Solutions is the industry’s most comprehensive sales intelligence, one trusted platform that turns market signals into actionable insight so you can confidently outperform competitors and drive lifetime value. We power your sales growth, allowing you to target the right audience with the best offer, leverage the most accurate ownership insights, and measure your performance. Learn more about Mobility Global @ https://www.mobilityglobal.com/en-us/sales-solutions
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