Video: JM Family Way and the Results Value Driver
Video Transcript
Heather Wilkinson, Assistant Vice President, JM Family Way – JMFE
The JM Family Way is really designed around culture and results our culture drives our results. When we think about our results. We have our main focus the foundation of our results, which is the long-term focus how we make decisions how we drive for results or with a long-term focus. How we continuously improve our growth orientation is with a long-term focus and then finally continuously improve, making sure that we have that when when mentality. We think about digital online buying and the digital retail experience when buying a car and probably about 2015, we saw a real evolution in the car buying experience that was coming off the heels of what Amazon and Uber were doing for the consumer experience.
And today we have a panel from JM Family represented from Southeast Toyota, Southeast Toyota Finance and JM&A Group and we’re going to talk about the digital online buying experience and how that buying experience impacted all of our business units Southeast Toyota Southeast Toyota Finance and JM&A Group.
How it drives for results how it creates alignment? So back in 2015. Chris may join JM&A Group and really focused in on how to improve the buying experience Amazon, Uber have been driving the experience for consumers to buy how they wanted to buy which then impacted the car buying experience. Chris, can you tell us a little bit about your experience at JM&A Group when you came in in 2015 … and digital retailing and the online buying experience.
Chris May, Director, Product Innovation and Intelligence – JM&A Group
Great question my journey with JM&A actually started in 2015. JM&A, we had tried and true processes for probably 20 30 years where it really benefited JM&A and a the customer and the dealership and around that time customers started really signaling that they were looking for something different. And so a lot of our dealer body was experimenting with all different ways to evolve the transaction.
And so one of the interesting things about JM&A leadership is is they didn’t really truly understand where the market was going to go, but they knew that we had to start today. And so my job when I joined the company in 2015 was to just explore. So I looked at process variations in dealerships. I looked at tablet-based selling tools. I looked at online transactions. My job was just to try everything and just sort of see what had legs.
If you remember you’re working together back. Then we have some digital tools that are now in over 2,000 of our stores that started through just that exploratory phase. One of the interesting things that that had the that we saw in that process was the online transaction was inevitable. We were probably very, very far away from executing that and we had a lot to do from the JM&A side in order to prepare for that.
But the signs were clear that customers liked the behavior that we were eventually going to going to be there but the job wasn’t for jaminase to solve and and one of the first relationships across business units that I had when I joined the company was actually with with Eric Carter who was in the strategy role over at SET and some of our earliest conversations were look Jamie needs to help solve this we need to understand what this is going to be but we’re sitting in the middle of transaction and the rest of the transaction has to solve itself first. And so that’s where we started working together back in 2016. I believe it was to really start trying some things out there.
Heather Wilkinson, Assistant Vice President, JM Family Way – JMFE
Absolutely and as we know nothing starts into a car is sold. So until Southeast Toyota and we have Eric Carter here today, and also Ryan’s near from Southeast Toyota until Southeast Toyota Eric sells a vehicle. Nothing is really going to be impacted. So tell us from Southeast Toyota’s perspective. Where did they come into play with this digital online?
Eric Carter, Vice President, Marketing – SET
You know, it’s a fun thing about the car business. It’s always changing right and you know being pro-business and and pro dealer and and one of them to evolve with the times as well. I’d say we’ve been in the online business for 20 years, right when the internet first come out it was like, hey, it’s gonna disrupt the business. It’s gonna change everything forever.
It certainly did and dealers evolved with that, you know, we started websites. And so now we have Facebook pages and you know, social media hit and you mentioned two great companies, you know, Amazon and Uber they come along and they raise the bar again with Casper expectations. It was like, okay think we’re all familiar with the Amazon effect. I mean, I remember when two day Prime came out and then all of a sudden one day prom come out, I didn’t even know I needed things in one day and all of a sudden I’m now mad if I can’t get it same day delivery, right? We’re like, wow, you know, this is really gonna rock the world of the you know business that we operate in how do we continue to push the envelope and align there? So it was a great partnership with Jay and a to say hey what have learned so far along the way and one of the the companies that we piloted. We you know ended up in 20 or 30 stores and our 177 store footprint in dealers really embraced this new way to do things.
Right? I say to carry the ball a little further down the field, right? It was like Hey, we’d always start the sales process online, but now is all about how do we take it a little bit further. I mean when I can order something online and have it within a couple days one day or same day.
That bleeds over in every business. We were not immune to that other absolutely and we had to meet the customer where they are, right, you know Ryan you work very closely with the Southeast Toyota dealers out there tell us some of the things that you saw through this process that was important when we talk about creating alignment, which is one of the main focus of the results area that we dial into from the JM Family Way value drivers. What are some things that you saw in dealing with the dealers from the car being sold then the car being financed and then the opportunity for a vehicle protection plan or other protection for the customer? Yeah, you know Heather I think you really hit the nail on the head. I think it’s really about the customer at the end of the day regardless of what business unit. It is it’s to take care of the customer and so Eric alluded to the customer journey and dealers look to us to be Progressive and I think to look further out, you know, we talk about the long term Focus the alignment when our business lives in 30 day cycles, and we just stack.
30-day cycles and arguably the business is going through the most transformative time we’ve ever seen and so, you know, we’ve talked about this a lot and SCT we’ve failed over and over so we can succeed and Eric talked about Pilots. We ran with our dealers and our dealers rolled up our sleeves and we said it’s not going to be perfect. We know there’s going to be bumps and bruises along the road, but they have trust and faith in us with the end game knowing that it’s providing the best customer experience and so we can evolve our business and so the alignments to pieces to me for it’s it’s with the dealer and the customer because the customer comes first, but it’s also up and down the street because at the end of the day we’re here to provide the best dealer support and customer centric focus that we can and so it’s really a testament. I think to the leadership of JM Family to look at the long-term focus and to know we can take risk and we can be patient but we look for results in these 30-day cycles, but we’re not going to be here for a year to we’ve been here for 53 years, I think and we look to be here for another 50 and that’s that’s the beauty of the partnership and the relationship we have with our business partners, but Also amongst each other.
Heather Wilkinson, Assistant Vice President, JM Family Way – JMFE
Matt from Southeast Toyota Finance perspective. Where do you see it coming in?
Matt Behrendt, District Sales Manager, SETF
So in 2018, we really got our hands involved and worked with Ryan’s team a lot and and Eric Steam and even the JM&A folks just figuring out where we can help assist through the whole financing process. How do we translate from the buying of the vehicle and agreeing to the selling price to getting them through Finance to offering that the vehicle protection products as smoothly as possible through the transition of this product that we’re creating together. So it did take a little bit of growing pains. There were some inefficiencies that we uncovered we help the dealers in terms of understanding where we could fit in how to make themselves better.
It also help them continuously improve internally and then also us internally internally at SETF so by working together with all three of our our different business units and then and working with our consumer and our dealer that customer experience got enhanced and made it such a smooth transition to buy the vehicle.
Heather Wilkinson, Assistant Vice President, JM Family Way – JMFE
No matter where the customers located, you know, Matt you brought up continuously improve and as we look at the value driver for results under continuously improved. We say rooted in our entrepreneurial and innovative spirit, we strive to do it better through constant evaluation and process improvement. And one thing about JM Family is when we say we do it better. It’s not that we do it better, but we’re constantly trying to move the needle and grow and build the best experience not only for the dealer, but also for the customer over at JM&A. There’s a lot of things were that I know that you all are looking at around how to be more innovative around products how to meet customers where they are. Can you tell us a little bit about what JM&A is looking at from a continuously improved and a growth orientation so we can grow as the industry evolves as a consumer needs evolved as a vehicle’s evolved from hybrid to battery, electric vehicle, etc.
Chris May, Director, Product Innovation and Intelligence – JM&A Group
There’s a few things that that come to mind as a continuation to what Matthew was describing. We made a lot of progress on our internal systems over the last few years to try to continue to reach the customer where they are.
You know when we started messing around with online transactions, we have maintenance timeframes from 12 to 7 AM because dealerships weren’t open. But in the online transaction, obviously you should be able to pull that information 24/7. So we’ve had to do a lot from a systems perspective, whereas before you’d only pull the price of a product but now we’ve enabled the ability to pull content along with that. It sounds easy to describe but it’s it’s these are the big efforts and now I guess the next wave of that and my current role is around looking at and all these different transaction types or these different vehicles. Products are going to have to maybe look feel quite differently on whether they’re packaged how they’re communicated what people’s buying motivations are in one channel versus a different Channel and just to make sure that we have the right product and the right channel the right time.
It’s a very very easy thing for me to say but it’s a very very hard thing and it takes a lot of smart people working together to make those things happen.
Heather Wilkinson, Assistant Vice President, JM Family Way – JMFE
You know drive for results is another value driver when we talk about who we are and what our behaviors are, you know, Eric, I know that we talked extensively about the definition of drive for results. And the definition is we create measurable objectives and hold ourselves accountable to optimize performance. Can you talk to us a little bit about optimize? What does that mean from Southeast Toyota’s perspective, especially in the industry that we’re dealing with now with a supply chain opportunities. How do we optimize performance for our dealers?
Eric Carter, Vice President, Marketing – SET
I’d say starts with the objectives that we set right we hold ourselves accountable and it’s not just some associates. It’s every associate, you know, we look at our core metrics how we define success and we define success with our customer success and we put money behind that quite frankly and yeah when the dealer succeed our associate succeed and not every organization has that topical. When you have that type of alignment that allows you to drive for results and achieve really levels that you wouldn’t before right? I mean, I think about our five state footprint we have about 16 percent of the US population.
But when you look at the Toyota sales penetration, we’re over 24% of Toyota sales in the US. I mean, how does that happen is years and years of driving for results aligning with our customer the dealer and making sure that we put the right Tools in place to help them achieve the results that we see, right? We don’t succeed unless they succeed and it takes alignment across every level of our organization. It’s really, you know fun to be part of that, right?
Heather Wilkinson, Assistant Vice President, JM Family Way – JMFE
So, Matt growth orientation is one of the representatives of the results value drivers and growth orientation is we continuously invest in people relationships tools and infrastructure to ensure our company and brands evolve and thrive. How does that show up for Southeast Toyota Finance our growth orientation. Tell us a little bit about the investments and why so with Southeast Toyota Finance is making the investments they are.
Matt Behrendt, District Sales Manager, SETF
So, Southeast Toyota Finance really invested in a couple of different things and a lot of different tools that we provided for the dealer such as this product going through the sale of a vehicle figuring out a seamless way for them to finance and then getting a vehicle protection product which JM&A with that being the mindset of growing the Dealer’s market share keeping their customer invested in that dealership having them align with our incentives to make sure that the customer gets advertised and we put incentives to advertise back towards that customer to go to that local dealer the originating dealer and also other Investments with our website to give them service reminders to make them come back to that dealership for service. Maybe it’s a 5,000 mile oil change you’re tired rotate and then just to make sure that they’re growing their market share internally. They’re keeping it retaining it and then that way with the technology that we can provide and the investments that we have. They can grow their their customer experience, too.
Heather Wilkinson, Assistant Vice President, JM Family Way – JMFE
That win-win mentality and you’re hearing that today from JM&A Group, Southeast Toyota Finance and Southeast Toyota. It’s all about that win-win and JM Family is in the business to help other businesses succeed.
Our partners our dealers our franchisees their success is a reflection of JM Family success. That’s our secret sauce. That’s our drive for performance. That’s our long-term focus in the foundation the lens that we use to make decisions. We appreciate the opportunity today to talk about our results value drivers and for you to join us and I want to thank Eric Carter from Southeast Toyota, Matthew Barons from Southeast Toyota Finance, Ryan Sneer from Southeast Toyota and Chris May from JM&A Group for the partnership that we’ve had on driving for results with that long-term Focus creating alignment amongst our business unit and continuously improving. Thank you.
