aM News: New Offerings and Elevated Executive Leaders

by automotiveMastermind

A lot has happened at automotiveMastermind since our last update.

Back in March, we were still buzzing from our 8th NADA Show experience. During the show, we reconnected with our partners, friends, and community. We also spoke on evolving trends in the automotive industry and announced exciting enhancements to our Mastermind sales and marketing platform.

These last several months, we’ve been building on all that momentum with exciting news and announcements related to our team, dealer partners, and Mastermind. In this blog post, we’ll recap what’s new at aM, including:

· The launch of Mastermind Academy

· New Mastermind platform updates

· Exciting executive leadership announcements

Introducing: Mastermind Academy for Continued Dealership Education and Support

Back in April, we launched Mastermind Academy, our first external learning system for dealership teams. Featuring educational content and resource on-demand, Mastermind Academy empowers our dealer partners to unlock the full power of our platform to maximize their sales and marketing opportunities.

Enhancing both aM’s on-site and virtual training that typically takes place every 30–45 days, these self-paced resources are easy-to-consume and designed for both existing teams and new hires.

“Enhanced training designed for veteran Mastermind users, as well as new hires, ensures that dealerships are leveraging the platform to their greatest advantage and keeps everyone aligned with the dealership’s goals and priorities,” explained aM CEO Matt Leone when the academy launched.

“We’ve utilized Mastermind Academy as part of our onboarding process for the last few months, and this new resource is easy to understand, engaging and effective,” said Devin Bodily, internet sales director at The All New Joe Myers Ford in Houston, Texas.

Mastermind Academy offers three different training routes:

· Courses with learning paths covering the fundamentals and tactical ways to use Mastermind.

· Best Practices that offer short articles, micro-learning how-to videos about specific Mastermind features and downloadable scripts and templates for users to leverage.

· Dealer Resources which keep dealer partners updated on the company’s latest offerings and events.

“With the inclusion of assistance from our dedicated dealer relations manager, our sales team’s follow through and presentation of the platform is much more effective.”

Enhanced Recall Data Integration

As a part of this same mission of equipping our dealer partners to succeed in today’s evolving automotive market, we announced a new product update to our Mastermind automated sales and marketing platform this summer with the integration of recall data. With this update, dealers who leverage Mastermind are able to view open recall data, empowering each to open a unique line of communication with their high-value customers that have open recalls in order to schedule an appointment.

The recall information is displayed within Mastermind to centralize customer data in a single location. Customers in a dealer’s portfolio that have an open recall will be marked with an “R” in their profile line. Mastermind users can proceed to view the recall title, description, and remedy within the platform. Users can also access talking points for salespeople highlighting safety risks, which enables dealers to maintain an honest dialogue regarding recalls.

With generic dealer service messaging that can often get lost in the noise, Mastermind’s recall data offers dealers a new opportunity to further separate themselves from the competition by creating personalized messaging for each customer. The information pulled from this data opens the door to timely conversations with customers, giving them more compelling reasons to engage with their dealer, which helps increase retention.

Working in conjunction with Mastermind’s real-time service arrival notifications, dealers can ensure a salesperson is ready to meet every customer as they arrive in the service drive. This update is particularly valuable to aM dealer partners as vehicle inventories remain low, creating an additional opportunity for dealers to drive customer loyalty, vehicle acquisition, and sales opportunities.

Executive Leadership Updates and Promotions

As we’ve continued growing and scaling Mastermind, we’ve also taken exciting steps to strengthen our leadership team at aM. In August, we made three announcements related to our executive team, announcing a new, broader role for a senior data executive and two other senior-level promotions.

Charity Taylor recently moved into a new role overseeing the creation of the Enterprise Business Analytics Team within the S&P Global Mobility division. Charity most recently served as managing director responsible for new product development and ongoing data operations. In this new role, Charity is developing analytical solutions to key industry challenges and reducing time-to-value for newly acquired sources by combining deep automotive expertise with world-class data assets from across the S&P Global Mobility organization.

She has long supported improved business outcomes for automotive clients through the development of unique analytical solutions, along with her ability to derive valuable insights from them to guide high-impact decisions. Prior to joining aM, she spent over 12 years at JD Power (PIN) and has nearly a decade of additional automotive experience in a variety of important financial roles, spanning across manufacturing, product development, sales and marketing, and supply chain for General Motors.

Aaron Baldwin was promoted to Chief Product Officer. In Aaron’s new role, he will oversee the product roadmap and strategy and will support a team of directors specializing in products, product marketing, integrations, and analytics.

Before joining the team at aM, Aaron served as Senior Vice President of product and business development at CarNow as a member of the founding management team, overseeing development of OEM, large client, and partner relationships, as well as product development and product lifecycle management. He also previously served as director of digital marketing at eLEAD and worked in various positions at Asbury Automotive Group, including director of dealership marketing, giving him insight into dealership operations that currently aid his role working with aM’s dealer partners.

Finally, Michael Eager was promoted to the newly created role of Chief Revenue Officer, where he will oversee the go-to-market teams and strategy. Prior to joining the aM team, Michael worked at CARFAX (also part of S&P Global Mobility) as the director of field sales and was instrumental in the launch of countless products and tremendous growth of the sales business.

In his 17 years of experience at CARFAX, Michael led the growth of the national field sales teams through both management and strategic sales leadership positions. He also previously held sales positions at tech startups and consulting companies, giving him a passion and expertise in launching new businesses and leading high-performing automotive sales teams.

“I’m confident these new roles for Charity, Aaron, and Michael will significantly strengthen our data leadership position, drive even greater levels of product innovation and continue to enhance product and service offerings for our dealer partners,” said automotiveMastermind Chief Executive Officer Matt Leone. “I could not have asked for more qualified and seasoned industry executives to fill these roles, and I look forward to ongoing success from these dedicated professionals and their teams.”

Since our founding in 2013 and the introduction of our flagship sales and marketing platform in 2019, we’ve continued evolving alongside the automotive industry at every step, empowering our dealer partners to do the same.

Interested in learning how we can help your dealership generate success in your loyalty, service and conquest portfolios? Contact us for a free demo.