Mastermind Gives Back – and Continues Looking Forward

by automotiveMastermind

At Mastermind, it’s part of our company culture to go the extra mile to support our dealer partners, our communities and each other – no matter what. This part of our culture has proven more important than ever this year. Through all the uncertainty and the challenges we faced this year, 2020 has reminded us how important it is that we’re part of the solution. Whatever challenges we may face, we are stronger together.

This September, our global team is joining together for our 2^nd Annual Mastermind Gives Back month, making it the perfect time for us to take a look back at what we’ve been doing at Mastermind over the last year to do our part (both for our dealer partners and our community), and look ahead to where we’re going next.

Doing Our Part in Challenging Times

As a company, our number one priority is empowering our dealer partners to succeed. When the scope of the pandemic and its disruption to auto dealerships started becoming clear, we knew we needed to act quickly to give enhanced support to our dealer partners.

By April, our team identified numerous ways we could quickly make a difference for our dealer partners. This included launching a Virtual BDC capability used by more than 200 dealers at its height, booking almost one appointment per hour in April and May. We also partnered with Covideo to launch Video Messenger, a personalized, one-to-one video communications tool in Market EyeQ that helps dealers make critical human connections to prospects and customers throughout the car sales process in a time where health concerns kept them physically apart.

Of course, we knew our dealer partners needed more than just the tools to succeed, and we aimed to equip dealers with the knowledge they needed to truly lead their teams. We worked hard to develop dozens of videos, whitepapers, e-books, blog posts, podcasts, webinars and more to share COVID-19 dealership best practices from our own experts, as well as what we were learning from our dealer partners in the field. We made this library of resources available free for everyone, as a contribution to the automotive industry.

Internally, we implemented the “4 Disciplines of Execution” (4DX) methodology in our organization as a way to create a common approach to strategic execution. In turn, some members of our Mastermind training team began rolling out this approach with dealer partners to help them identify “Wildly Important Goals” and integrate 4DX into their own cultures.

Connecting to Our Communities

Launched in 2019, our charitable giving committee founded Mastermind Gives Back Month to put a spotlight on supporting organizations doing incredible work in the communities we call home.

Through everything from fun runs, bake sales, movie and gaming nights with colleagues and even auctioning off the opportunity to duct tape Mastermind Co-Founder and CEO Marco Schnabl to a wall, last year Team Mastermind raised more than $22,000 for charities such as St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Larkin Street Youth Services in San Francisco, Ronald McDonald House in New York and Fundacja Trzeba Marzyć, a charity that supports seriously ill children in Gdansk, Poland.

Due to the pandemic, large-scale community activities were placed on hold, but that didn’t stop us. This year, we’re still giving back – but virtually. Among other volunteer and fundraising initiatives, members of our leadership team are hosting interactive games throughout the month to raise money for charity. Mastermind team members from across the country can play poker with Chief Commercial Officer Andrew Rains, bingo with Chief Technology Officer Kos Jha, Scattergories with Chief Product Officer Joe Kacala or trivia with Chief Executive Officer Marco Schnabl and Chief Operating Officer Matt Leone.

Additionally, from Sept. 21-25 members of our team will be supporting Mastermind parent company IHS Markit’s Stepathon benefiting Healthy LifeStars.

We’re also doing our part to identify ways in which we can all play a role in making our communities more inclusive and diverse places to live, work and grow through our Mastermind Inclusion and Diversity committee. In honor of National Disability Awareness Month in October, the committee will challenge our team to identify implicit associations they make in their daily lives and host conversations about how we can be better allies in the workplace and in our communities.

Continuing Our Momentum

As an industry, we learned many valuable lessons in 2020. One of the biggest: The automotive industry doesn’t stop – and neither do we. Mastermind’s products and services continue to evolve and improve, helping our dealer partners proactively identify and engage auto sales leads and maximize their ROI in even the most challenging market conditions.

We’ve prioritized and innovated our suite of products and services in 2020 to meet our dealer partners’ needs during the COVID-19 pandemic. This included the roll out of pre-owned auto sales functionality to our Market EyeQ sales platform.

As OEMs halted production around the world, the used market was flooded with defleeted vehicles and budget-conscious shoppers began considering both new and used vehicles in record numbers. Dealer partners who were able to take advantage of Market EyeQ’s unique ability to unify new and used sales teams on a single predictive analytics platform were far ahead of their competition in a quickly changing marketplace.

In September, we took another step into the future with the announcement that we have integrated CARFAX History-Based Value capabilities into Market EyeQ, giving our dealer partners access to a powerful and transparent tool to improve trade-in valuation, predict reconditioning costs and support market-based used vehicle inventory pricing.

Along with Market EyeQ’s pre-owned vehicle functionality and Mastermind’s predictive analytics-based personalized marketing solutions for connecting consumers directly to used vehicle inventory, this expands dealer partners’ access to a powerful suite of tools to drive used vehicle ROI and profitability.

If you’re interested in learning more about Mastermind or exploring how our team can support your dealership’s forward momentum, contact us.