Over the past few months, we have shared  sneak previews of  sessions that will be held at 2024 Digital Dealer Conference & Expo (#DDCE2024)! But the introductions we have written have left attendees wanting more.

To that end, session leaders have offered an expanded explanation of what is in store at their session in Las Vegas. Gee Automotive Companies’ Jake Hales offers a deeper insight for the session titled How to Turn a Vendor into a Partner.

Seeking A Relationship

Cassie Broemmer of Van Tuyl and CarWars asked me a fantastic question at last year’s Digital Dealer, “What’s the difference between a Vendor and a Partner?”  It sparked a whole series of thoughts and tactics I hope to share with you at DD24.

The answer, after a couple minutes of reflection as, “a partner is someone that not only invest in my business, but allows me to invest in their business, whether it be financial, or in feedback or both.” Over the next months I considered what it took to “convert” a standard vendor relationship into something more like my answer to Cassie’s question.

There are some vendors that actually desire a partner relationship, but many that don’t. Some that think they want a partnership relationship but are unwilling to take incoming feedback or put the effort in of a top tier vendor.

How to Make that Connection

Vendors who truly seeking partnership will provide excellent feedback, invite you to participate in their design process, and desire deeper and wide relationship both with you and the personnel of your store.

Partners with our dealer group have provided us sponsorship moneys for charity events, supply scheduled consulting sessions, invite us to their charity events, desire our feedback on their products, and ask us to participate in dealer councils.

Turning a vendor into a partnership is a bit more dynamic.  Does the account representative care that much to develop a relationship?  It’s sometimes tough to gage.  Does growing that relationship serve any real benefit?  Sometimes, but certainly not for every vendor, their product, or based on the quality of their representative.

Assessment Metrics

In this session, we will look at the Vendor Assessment process and determine what vendors are appropriate for a deeper, more high-valued partnership. You might be shocked to know that cost is the very last thing I look at when assessing a vendor and I am far more interested in how easy it would be for the staff at our stores to adopt the services the vendor provides.

Determine the object of why you need the vendor.  In turn, we’ll investigate and compare our objective against the Key Metrics we use to assess the vendor’s impact on our staff:

• Disruption Score
• Time to Competency
• Existing Competency
• User Experience
• Customer Experience
• Investor Confidence

We’ll look at the importance of the feedback partnerships can provide, from finding key operational shortcomings that can turn your business around up through networking and personal acquaintances that impact your career for decades to come.

Role of Dealers

As I continued to reflect on this topic, I also recognized that our dealerships, frequently act as a vendor to our clients.  Whether it be a regular Fleet customer, high mileage drivers that frequent our service center or maybe it’s the distinguished gentlemen that often buys the hottest new collector car as soon as it’s allocated.

In many of these cases, wouldn’t we want to enhance these clients to partnerships?  A bad review from one of the clients could devastate revenue streams.  But a phone call directly to one of our managers shows great trust that we can mitigate the problem before it goes public, or worse yet, viral.

The more often I train or speak at an industry conference, the more I find myself a student of etymology—the study of the origin of words.  Sometime, the things we train are lost because we find ourselves using similar words, but very different interpretations or definition of those words.

Defining Statements

Below, please see the list of words we’ll use regularly… and though perhaps not word for word taken from the Dictionaries, we can at least agree upon their definitions for this session.

• Partner: Any companies or individuals that are mutually investing and benefiting from their association.
• Vendor: Any company or individual that supplies you with a service or product. YOU are a vendor.
• Client:  Any companies or individuals that regularly purchase your products and/or services.
• Customer: Any companies or individuals that purchase your products and/or services but it is unclear whether they intend to frequently purchase.
• IRL Networking:  Associations, Clubs, Religions Organization, and Conferences that take please live and in-person (In Real Life).  Social Media and Streaming platforms are not IRL Networking.

The method of turning a Vendor into Partner, or a customer into a client is easier than you might think, but more complicated than just naming it to be so.  Ultimately our actions determine the relationships we build. It would take outstanding customer service and outrageous hospitality to take it to the next level. But it always starts at the same place… an invitation.  Would you join me? Digital Dealer 24. Wednesday, October 9 at 10:20am Boulevard 163, MGM Grand, Las Vegas.

DDCE2024 Events

#DDCE2024 is a 2.5-day event, Oct. 8-10, 2024, at MGM Grand in Las Vegas that will bring together automotive dealers, OEMs, thought leaders, and solution providers to power business growth and connections. The 2024 Digital Dealer Conference & Expo is your chance to discover innovative solutions and gain cutting-edge strategies, actionable insights, and new ideas to implement for maximum impact.

Digital Dealer Conference & Expo will include:

• Enhanced networking: more meetups and fun ways to connect throughout the event
• A Speed Networking program, which offers dealerships and vendors a relaxed yet efficient way to explore a variety of innovative solutions
• An expo hall with 120+ cutting-edge auto retail solutions
• 75+ actionable sessions
• Masterminds and interactive labs
• And more!

Digital Dealer offers full conference and expo badge options, as well as an expo hall-only option for Dealerships/OEMs. Digital Dealer Conference & Expo attendee badge types include:

• Dealership (exclusively for dealers and employees of a dealership)
• OEM (exclusively for vehicle manufacturers)
• Allied (anyone that supports, services, or sells solutions to dealerships falls under this category)

Click here to register now.