Digital Dealer - September 2017 - 22

I N T E RV I E W WI T H D D 2 3 K E Y N O T E

Continued from pg. 20

AN AVID RUNNER AND HAVE
COMPLETED MANY MARATHONS. WHAT LESSONS
DOES RUNNING MARATHONS
TEACH YOU ABOUT BUSINESS
OR VICE-VERSA? I'm really glad

you brought that up. My mentor
and business partner in the store
was ill in 2005. Unfortunately, he
had cancer, and one of his goals
was to beat the cancer and to run
another marathon (he had run several previously). In late 2005 and
early 2006, it looked like he wasn't
going to be able to that. So, I took
on that challenge to run a marathon
for him. I had never run so much
as a mile. I guess I started in March
of 2006 and I completed the New
York City Marathon in November
of 2006. Little did I know that it
would start me on a journey that
now has me completing, I think, 25
marathons since then.
The business lesson is you really
learn how to make efficient use of
resources to get maximum horsepower over a prolonged period of
time. You've got, in theory, limited
resources. So, how do you use those
resources strategically to get the
maximum output in your store, in
your business, over a protracted
period of time? I think it's really
helped me understand that in business. You could spend exorbitant
amounts on advertising and generate business, but you can't do that
over a protracted period of time. It
just won't give you the same result,
there is, inevitably, a diminishing
return.

I'D LIKE TO SHIFT TO ANOTHER TOPIC FOR OUR NEXT
QUESTION. WHAT IS PARAGON'S MARKETING STRATEGY? The right message to the right

customer at the right time. You
have to know your customer. You
have to develop ways of communicating with the customer. And those
ways of communication have to be
sincere. You can't fake sincerity.
You're marketing to a sophisticated
audience. If you are not sincere, you
22

SEPTEMBER 2017

won't get the results you're looking
for.
Take a look at Amazon. If you
log on to your Amazon account,
your homepage would be different
from my homepage which would be
different from my wife's homepage. Because Amazon knows how
to serve up to you the things that
you are most interested in. Isn't it
shocking that we're not using the
same technology in our industry?
Both on the OEM level and on the
dealer level.
When I access my Amazon
account, I can tell you "coffee" stuff
comes up, "running" stuff comes
up, and some of the other interests
and hobbies I have, they come up.
They get me every time. So, they
know this and a lot of other details
about us. They serve you up what
you need. In fact, they're getting
so sophisticated with it, they serve
it before you actually need it. They
figure if you ordered a 40 K-Cup
Keurig Coffee and you typically go
through that in 20 days, the next
thing you know, about 18 days later
they serve you up and say "Hey, do
you want to buy some coffee?" A.I.
is becoming an incredibly powerful
tool.
IN WHAT WAYS DO YOU
UTILIZE SOCIAL MEDIA? We

know that social media is a lot like
traditional marketing: if you don't
have a strategy that ladders back to
your broader business objectives,
you're going to fail. So, we start
with a solid strategy that ties to
Paragon's overall business strategy and mirrors our commitment
to customers. Then we build our
social media strategy, content, and
tactics to reinforce it. And as with
everything else we do, the customer
has to be front and center. We don't
aim just to collect likes or views; we
try to use social channels to deepen
our brand promise and improve our
overall customer experience.
We hire digitally savvy professionals who not only understand
these social media channels, they

D I G I TA L D E A L E R . C O M

understand how their work leads to
our business success. They understand our customers; they spend
a lot of time getting to know their
needs and anticipate their behavior.
And they understand our commitment to customer experience. These
aren't just "kids" we let loose on social channels because we figure they
grew up on it; these are professionals with specialized knowledge for a
specialized business channel.

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR MANAGEMENT
STYLE? How about pain in the

butt? I think I give my team a lot
of latitude. I think they know I
have a very high expectation of
them. I push them to grow beyond
where they even see themselves. I
am proud of the men and women
who work in the store. They do a
fantastic job, truly a fantastic job.
My business partner, Edith Singer,
is fantastic. She gives me the latitude to run the store and is super
supportive. She owns a majority of
the store and she doesn't feel the
need to jump in. Of course, if I go
off the rails she brings me back to
reality. What's a good manager if
he's constrained? He's not going
to be able to grow. I try to do the
same thing for our people, which
gives them the latitude to grow.
This means giving them a chance
to make mistakes. So long as those
mistakes are not integrity mistakes,
you suffer and you allow those
mistakes to happen. When it comes
to integrity mistakes, we don't have
any tolerance.
WHAT DO YOU LOOK FOR
WHEN HIRING NEW EMPLOYEES? A couple of things. Rule #1

is the quality of niceness. We can
train them on how to sell cars, we
can train them on the sales process.
It's very difficult to train somebody
to be nice and nice sells. Nice is
a very good quality. The second
thing I look at is how would I feel
if this individual were working for
my competition. If I say it wouldn't
matter to me if they were working
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