On today’s show, Hugh Hathcock, owner of ReconVelocity, joins us in the studio once again. This time, he is accompanied by Patrick Abad, General Manager of Beaver Toyota, right here in metro Atlanta.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Jim Fitzpatrick: Hi everyone, Jim Fitzpatrick, thanks so much for joining me on another edition of CBT News. We’re so happy to have with us in the studio. Mr. Hugh Hathcock, who is with ReconVelocity, the founder and owner of ReconVelocity, and he brought with him one of his clients, Mr. Patrick Abad. Is it Abad?
Patrick Abad: Abad.
Jim Fitzpatrick: Abad, there you go, that’s not so bad. It’s Abad. And you are with, you’re the GM of Beaver Toyota.
Patrick Abad: Yep, here in Atlanta.
Jim Fitzpatrick: Which is a very large new store here in Atlanta that’s doing a huge volume and it’s just a tremendous store, isn’t it?
Patrick Abad: It is. It’s awesome. It’s a beautiful facility. Great product. Great market.
Jim Fitzpatrick: Yeah, for sure. And now your Recon is all fixed up and running, right?
Patrick Abad: Well, yeah, yeah. It was a work in progress, but we were rocking.
Jim Fitzpatrick: That’s right. Take us back when, how did you find these guys and what kind of condition were they in?
Hugh Hathcock: Well, Patrick and I go way back from the Elead days. He worked with, at Wesley Chapel Toyota when I met him probably 15 years ago. And he was the GM there. They ran Elead the last 15 years or so. As I got out of the business and got back in, he was one of the first guys I called because he had just gotten the job. And when you moved up here, I basically called him and coincidentally he was in the market. He had just been talking the week I called you, you had done one or two Recon demos with other companies trying to figure out.
Jim Fitzpatrick: Really? Okay. You knew there was a problem and you had to fix it?
Patrick Abad: Yeah. And I just couldn’t get my arms wrapped around it. I reached out to a whole bunch of different companies and that morning I did a demo with another competitor and then afternoon Hugh called me and said, “Hey, I got something for you.” I’m like, “You’ve got to be kidding.”
Jim Fitzpatrick: What are the chances?
Patrick Abad: Timing couldn’t have been better. I knew I had a problem. I knew.
Jim Fitzpatrick: How did you know you had a problem?
Patrick Abad: Because when you talk to your people, you got so many people in different roles and in the reconditioning process, and you hear, “We’re at four days, we’re at eight days, we’re at six days.” Okay, I need something to really get my arms wrapped around it. And I’ve done all the spreadsheets you could do. And I was spreadsheeted out. I needed a tool that I could hit three, four buttons, see exactly where I’m at and dissect it and fix the problem. And so I was like, I need a tool. And then when Hugh came along and he showed me his tool, he was far more advanced than any of the tools I looked at.
Jim Fitzpatrick: Really? And so you got a good up close personal look with each one, right?
Patrick Abad: I did. I did. I was, because I like to make good decisions so I dig deep. I do my homework. I call some dealers. That’s I think the main thing you do. And then when Hugh, and Hugh and I, we do, we go way back. And the thing that drove me really to choose Hugh’s product was the support that I get from his team. it isn’t just the here’s an hour webinar, teach your people, go. And then I’m teaching everybody. Even to this day I hire somebody new in the process and he sends somebody out to help me walk them through it. It’s a big difference for sure.
Jim Fitzpatrick: Yeah. The boots on the ground, it would seem to me would be a differentiator.
Patrick Abad: Most companies don’t want to make that investment. And you know what? And that’s why most companies don’t make it.
Jim Fitzpatrick: Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Talk to me Hugh, about a program like this. How many, when you talk to dealers, are they in a similar situation? I know that can’t be always the case when you call somebody and they go, it just so happens though that I do recognize there’s a problem in recon. What do you usually find?
Hugh Hathcock: In the four months that’s happened maybe one or two I’ve been in the market and looking. 90% are, you have to really start asking them questions because they think they’re where they’re not. They think they’re four, six days. And when you start talking to them about it, you have to really ask the questions so they understand, and figure it out kind of by their self instead of you saying, “Well, you’re crazy because you can’t monitor this with a spreadsheet, without technology that’s time dating things and making people accountable and has a mobile app that’s really easy to use.”
Hugh Hathcock: And they have to understand all that. And they understand the technology. But remember the average dealer buys, how many technologies have you bought? And you guys never ended up using it. And we were paying for technology that you were getting nothing out of?
Patrick Abad: Always. We do it every day.
Jim Fitzpatrick: Every day. Or the last GM that was there, he signed up and then his team left or what have you. And sometimes dealerships don’t even know about the technologies that they’re paying for.
Hugh Hathcock: But GMs, and when you meet with these people now they’re not interested in just adding another technology to it. You’ve got to really sit down and say, “Okay, here’s how easy this is. Here’s your ROI. And we have something we call a performance promise.” I didn’t charge him the first 90 days. And if it doesn’t work he doesn’t need to pay it.
Jim Fitzpatrick: You’ve been known for that stuff. You were the first one out there that said, “I’m not going to have a contract if you don’t like Elead, then don’t have Elead.” Which was very, very, forward-thinking because other companies were, oh no, no, no, you’re going to sign up for a year and it’s going to automatically renew.
Hugh Hathcock: But we tell the owner now, this is an inexpensive tool. Whatever you pay in 90 days, six months, if it hadn’t got you the ROI, you want, we’ll rebate all your money.
Jim Fitzpatrick: Wow, that’s pretty strong. That makes this a no brainer.
Hugh Hathcock: But it’s strong because we know the tool. We’re going to do the right thing. The tool is going to be strong. The support, the recon experts are going to be awesome. And the only way it could fail is if we don’t get some kind of buy in or somebody doesn’t do it at the dealer level what they’re supposed to. Then he isn’t going to ask me to rebate it. He’s going to help me fix it.
Jim Fitzpatrick: Oh, for sure. And then he’s going to sit here on our show and talk to other dealers about how great it is. But it really, when you think about it, it was nice enough for you to come down into the studio to talk about that, because a lot of dealers are very, I don’t know, I have a program that works, but to have you come in and say, “No this, hey dealers, this really does work,” speaks I think volumes about how well it’s working for you.
Patrick Abad: Well, yeah. And when we first installed, like I said, everybody’s telling me you’re a four days, we’re at six days or at eight days, great. We’re at 14 days.
Jim Fitzpatrick: Oh wow.
Patrick Abad: Yeah. Instantly I was able to dissect that problem. And you know what? At the end of the day, in this aggressive market that we’re in, we’re sitting in Atlanta. It’s a super aggressive market.
Jim Fitzpatrick: Yeah, you got that right.
Patrick Abad: We got to get these things out front. And got to get them out front quick. And I couldn’t dissect my problems, but now I could. And now not only that, and this is I think the big thing that we got to mention is, how his people, his team, his support staff, his performance managers, helped me tie pay plans to it. I think that’s the big, pay plan drives behavior.
Jim Fitzpatrick: That’s nice. You do that with all your clients?
Patrick Abad: But you’re able to do that.
Hugh Hathcock: We do it with the dealers that want us to do it. As a recon expert, the dealer wants to buy something from somebody that is a master at that business. We bring guys in that really understand recon and we understand recon.
Jim Fitzpatrick: And retail.
Hugh Hathcock: We, if I’m a dealer, I don’t want to talk to a guy that is just selling recon. I want to talk to a guy that understands it, will give me best practices, has it in hundreds of stores and is taking it to the next level. We’re going to take this, we’re just in phase one of ReconVelocity. We’re going to do some things that we’re talking to some of our progressive dealers about, but it’s exciting.
Jim Fitzpatrick: So stay tuned, huh?
Hugh Hathcock: Yes.
Jim Fitzpatrick: How has this changed your life as a GM that’s got a very high volume store that’s always putting cars into recon? Talk to us about how that’s helped you manage things better.
Patrick Abad: Well, it’s just true accountability. And it’s one click. I don’t have to, walking the lot’s big and as a general manager it’s one of the biggest things you can do, is walk the lot every day. But what are you seeing? You don’t know what you’re seeing. And really at handheld I can see what I’m seeing. Those five cars are in body shop. These 10 cars are in detail. These 20 cars are in the shop. There’s true accountability and you know, because you assign people to each step. And so you know who’s accountable for it.
Jim Fitzpatrick: Now those department heads are really nervous when you walk the lot and you’ve got this in your hand and you’re looking because they’re going, uh oh, that better not fall in my jurisdiction if they’re looking at something.
Patrick Abad: Well this is what’s cool, it self polices itself. Because when I’m done with it, I’m pushing it into the next step and now he’s accountable for it. Well, what I’m doing with it, I’m getting it out of my staff, because literally every manager meeting we have, we spend five minutes just talking about where are we at? And each step, in how many days.
Jim Fitzpatrick: That’s great. Remember the manager meetings prior though as as I sat in on hundreds of them as a GM and a dealer principal where you’d have the finger pointing across the conference table and you’d look at the report and how come these cars aren’t getting out quicker? And the fixed ops would point to the used car guy and the used car guy would point to everybody in fixed ops and the body shop and everything else. And nobody really ever knew the true story. It was always like this very gray area, hey boss, we’re doing the best we can. hey, we don’t have the cars out quick enough. And you kind of felt helpless. And now they have a technology for it.
Patrick Abad: And that’s it because now it’s not, he didn’t give me the keys. It’s, well, it’s in your step now you got to go get the keys. It is, it’s the next level of accountability.
Jim Fitzpatrick: Yeah, for sure. Well, Patrick Abad I want to thank you so much for joining us. And Hugh Hathcock, thank you so much for joining us on CBT news. It’s been great. I want to have you back and we do a followup. Maybe we can bring the cameras down to the dealership and talk to some of the people down there that are actually using it.
Patrick Abad: Cool. Love that. For sure.
Jim Fitzpatrick: Great. Thank you.
CBT Automotive Network, the number one most-watched network in retail automotive. This has been a JBF Business Media production.
