Making Customer Experience Part of the Dealership Culture with Joe Barhoumi

Making Customer Experience Part of the Dealership Culture with Joe Barhoumi

Joe Barhoumi is the Internet Manager at Newbold Toyota BMW, Illinois, where he led the establishment of the Business Development Center (BDC), spearheading the vision and operational framework to enhance overall business and growth. Joe is also a strategic Digital Marketer and leads the digital marketing strategy at Newbold.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• Joe’s experience of building a department and marketing strategy
• The benefits of having easy to understand data available at all times
• The inventory challenges facing dealerships today 
• Which marketing strategies are essential for different parts of the sales funnel.

In this episode…

The customer is at the center of the dealership experience. Your marketing should reflect that. 

Leads at all levels interact with your dealership team in a myriad of ways, from the website to the showroom, and the customer service offered in between. 

There is no ad or marketing content that works for shoppers at every stage of the funnel. The marketing team must consider different strategies for all stages while maintaining messaging consistency. 

In this episode of InsideAuto, Joe Barhoumi, Internet Manager at Newbold Toyota BMW, spoke with Ilana Shabtay about how experiences outside of the industry gave him the tools to build and lead Newbold’s internet department and marketing strategy. They discuss the inventory challenges facing the industry right now, the current growth phase at Newbold, and the different marketing strategies that can build positive customer experiences at every stage of the sales funnel.

Resources Mentioned: 

• Ilana Shabtay on LinkedIn 
• Fullpath 
• Joe Barhoumi on LinkedIn
• Newbold Toyota
• Newbold BMW
• Dealer Synergy

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by Fullpath (formerly AutoLeadStar).

Fullpath is the automotive industry’s leading customer data and experience platform (CDXP).

Fullpath enables dealers to turn their first-party data into lifelong customers by unifying siloed data sources and leveraging that data to create exceptional, hyper-personalized customer experiences.

To learn more, visit www.fullpath.com

Episode Transcript:

Ilana Shabtay 

Ilana Shabtay here, host of Inside Auto podcast, where we interview top dealers, GMs, marketers, entrepreneurs, and thought leaders in and out of the automotive industry. And before we introduce today’s guest, this episode is sponsored by Fullpath .com. Fullpath is the automotive industry’s leading customer data and experience platform, CDXP. Fullpath enables dealers to turn their first party data into lifelong customers by unifying siloed data sources and leveraging that data to create exceptional hyper -personalized customer experience.

For more information, visit fullpath .com. 

Today’s guest is Joe Barhoumi. Joe, how are you doing?

Joe Barhoumi

I’m doing great. Thanks for having me on.

Ilana Shabtay

Thanks for joining the show.

Joe Barhoumi

Yes, I’m looking forward to the conversation. 

Ilana Shabtay

We have Joe here. He is the Internet Manager at Newbold Toyota BMW in Illinois, where he led the establishment of the Business Development Department, spearheading the vision and operational framework to enhance overall business and growth. That’s a huge project, so we’ll definitely get into that in this episode. Joe’s also a strategic digital marketer and leads the digital marketing strategy, including social media, email marketing, SEO. I’m sure there’s much, much more that we’re going to get into to here, but Joe, you come with a lot of years of experience and a wealth of knowledge, so thanks again for joining Inside Auto.

Joe Barhoumi 

You got it. Really appreciate being here. And, you know, we’re like you said, it’s we’re we’re on a mission here at Newbold and, you know, it’s great to great to talk to you guys.

Ilana Shabtay 

Yes, and we are looking forward to hearing about that and what you guys have been implementing at Newbold. 

Before we get into that, I’d love to know how you got into automotive. Tell us a little bit about your background and then how you stumbled into automotive. I always like asking this question because I feel like it’s either you were born into it or you accidentally ended up into it and can never leave. So I love kind of hearing the stories and understanding where my guests fit in.

Joe Barhoumi

Yeah, you know, so I started in this industry when I was about 19 years old, in my 40s now. And, you know, it’s, it’s been a, it’s been a kind of a long journey. And, you know, the reason really, I got into it is because I wanted a challenge. I was in wireless at a really young age in sales. And, you know, I figured, Hey, what’s my next step here? I’m going to try automotive. My first job was at a Chevy dealer. Like I said, when I was 19 and you know, I really struggled in that position. I thought it was just going to come easy. You can just sell cars very easily and quickly realized there’s a lot more to it than that. Went on from there and went actually to a used car dealership. They sold kind of high line vehicles like Mercedes, Porsche, and just cool cars that I thought would be really cool. And did really well there and got a really under a good mentor and a good manager who really brought me up into the business from there. So, and from, you know, really from there, you know, I did that for a few years, kind of bounced around from selling cars and wireless. 

And then I opened my own business, after about 10 years, being in automotive, open my own company, totally outside of automotive. but said, you know what? I want to try my own thing. but that’s really where I kind of cut my teeth in business, cut my teeth in marketing and whenever it’s yours and you own it, it’s kind of a matter of how do I be successful in this? So you got to learn a lot of things on the job and on the fly. 

So from there, kind of got back into automotive after our business closed after about seven years and been here ever since. And it is kind of in my blood right after so long. You just, it’s kind of part of you and it’s something that I really know, an industry I really love and truly enjoy where I’m at now.

Ilana Shabtay

Yeah, that’s great. And I love that you have that seven years out of automotive, first of all, which is always nice to be able to kind of reflect on what’s happening outside of the industry, bring it back, but also we’re able to get the experience in marketing and in business and I’m sure that you’re applying a lot of that into the new role that you came back to automotive in. 

Can you talk a little bit now about your new role? It’s a little bit shifted from selling, right, when you first started in automotive. So it’s more digital marketing strategy and overseeing that. So I’d love to talk a little bit about that and then we can really get into some details and like what you’ve implemented in the past six to 12 months that’s really changed the way that you’re looking at your marketing machine in general.

Joe Barhoumi 

Yeah, you know, in really, you know, coming out of coming out of running my own company, I, I really jumped into these types of roles. I really went into business development or marketing, you know, whatever I could do, because honestly, it’s really what I loved about business in general. It’s really what I love is, you know, marketing and creating and, and doing those things. So, you know, it was, it was nice to get back into this role. So I’m with new bold Toyota BMW. 

We have two stores here in O ‘Fallon, Illinois, just outside of St. Louis, Missouri. And, you know, really they needed somebody to build a department, build an internet department, build a marketing strategy. It’s something that, you know, they really had kind of a tough time hiring for because, you know, not a lot of people have experience with like, hey, start from nothing and build something and help us grow. So that’s kind of where I came in and you know, I just, I really, I really enjoyed that aspect of it. It’s really why I jumped at it was because, you know, it’s like, Hey, I can actually have a huge impact on this business. I can build it. You know, they, they kind of have given me a free reign. So, Hey, you run with this, we’ll support you along the way. And that’s exactly what they’ve done. You know, we’ve, we’ve asked for things and, you know, our, our ownership group understands really what this is about and you know they’ve really supported me along the way so it’s been it’s been a great journey with with new bolden you know plan to be here for years to come

Ilana Shabtay

That’s great and it’s always nice when you really feel like you can have autonomy in your area at work so that you can really implement test, trial, figure out what’s gonna actually impact the business. So on that note, what are some of the things that you’ve implemented? Whether that’s from a personnel, HR, structural perspective, like actually building the team, or things in marketing and internet sales that you feel like have really moved the needle.

Joe Barhoumi 

Yeah, I mean, we’ve we’ve done a lot in a short period of time. So I’ve actually we just I actually have only been here six months now. So from the from the very start, it was hire a team, you know, get some people in here, start working in CRM, start, you know, connecting with customers. We do that really quickly. We actually we grew very quickly in doing that. From there, you know, and kind of setting that foundation up. We have built new websites, which actually we just launched a few days ago for both stores. 

Ilana Shabtay 

Right, congratulations. It’s a big project.

Joe Barhoumi

Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, that was, you know, I’m just, I’m just glad I’m bald already, right? Before I, before I started that, I could pull my hair out and doing that, but.

Ilana Shabtay 

My God. When we launched our new website, I think that’s where all my white hairs came from, so I can identify.

Joe Barhoumi 

That’s right. That’s right. You know, it’s a lot of back and forth with vendors and, you know, consultants and, you know, all of that stuff that goes into it. And, and really, you know, you want it to be perfect, right? It’s, it’s never going to be perfect. A website is a living, breathing thing. But at the end of the day, you know, you want to launch with kind of the necessities there. And I think we’ve done that. We’ve done a good job with it. And, you know, I think everybody’s happy with it. 

But yeah, I mean, you know, we’re just, we’re really trying to go at this from, hey, this is a digital age, right? We want a good customer experience from the first contact, the first touch to, they’re in the showroom now, right? We want that full circle from our website to the people that our customers are talking to, to our showroom salespeople you know, and customer service people in between, right? We want the customer experience to be part of our culture. And that’s really what we’re trying to build. 

We also have connected with Fullpath. They have done a fantastic job for us from the standpoint of, you know, really nurturing our customer base was really step one for us, but also in the digital marketing realm, you know, we wanted to do campaigning through social media the correct way we wanted you know to do You know our Google search ads we wanted to do everything under one roof Fullpath gave us that opportunity to do so.

But more than that I mean really what I love about Fullpath and how they’ve helped us is they really have allowed us to gauge and view data and say look this is what we’re spending versus what we’re seeing, right? And, and we’ve, we’ve done a good job. 

We didn’t really have that in the past. We had a marketing company in the past that really was like, set it and forget it. I’m, I’m way more of a hands-on type of person than that because what happens is whenever you set it and forget it, guess what, what happens is you forget it, right? 

Ilana Shabtay 

There’s a reason it’s called that way. Yep.

Joe Barhoumi 

You don’t, you don’t, you don’t, you do exactly. You don’t pay attention to the numbers. You don’t pay attention to the spend, right? And, and really, what Fullpath has allowed us to do is pay attention to those things again and really, really make almost split decisions on, you know, hey, this is working. This isn’t working. How do we, you know, how do we make adjustments? You know, we have calls every couple of weeks and, you know, we might make adjustments on that call. We may not, but the bottom line is the data is there. We can move that you know, make that decision and move forward very quickly. So, yeah, I mean, that was another huge project. 

We’re also working on, we kind of take, took on a new project. once our websites were starting to finish up, we are working now in CRM, right? again, going back to that customer experience and being full circle, we really want that frontline employee that,is making contact with customers over the internet to be prepared, you know, with every scenario that’s happening. So we are working with a company called Dealer Synergy to kind of put in new processes into our CRM. And really, really what the processes do is it coaches every single one of our employees at any given moment within the CRM. So there’s also some automations built in to that as well. So Fullpath built a lot of those nurturing and automations kind of higher funnel and then the CRM kind of comes in and does the same thing you know at the at the lower touch points so I think it’s going to be a it’s going to be a really nice marriage once it’s all you know up and running but right now I mean we’re we’re seeing some really great results already so.

Ilana Shabtay 

I think that’s great and I think you hit on a few really important points, one of them being the customers at the center of all of your marketing strategy and all of your touch points and so making sure that you’re not just implementing the technology and the solutions on that level but training your staff, right? You were mentioning that you want to train everyone, make sure that they understand what’s happening in the CRMs, that they can actually approach customers with the right information. 

So I think that’s incredibly important and then the other thing that I think you said which is worth re -mentioning is this set it and forget it. I like how you talked about the website as being a living and breathing thing. I think that’s really real, especially for me as a marketer. Even your website, which is like you launch it, great, you feel so great. There is like constant QA. There is constant, you know, making sure that your pages are actually designed for conversions and which pages are not getting conversions and why aren’t they getting conversions and where on your website are they getting stuck and how can you implement SEO more so that you can always be on the top of Google. So just thinking of

about your website as a living and breathing human or thing is really important. And it’s just so easy to set it, forget it with a website. So same thing goes obviously for your digital marketing strategy like you mentioned and anything else that you’re working on from a marketing perspective. It’s just nothing is set in and forget it. You want to have the tools

to sort of always cover your bases and run in the background, but you can’t ever do the set and forget it. You have to have that strategy above. So I really like the way that you mentioned that. 

And then let’s talk a little bit about any challenges that you’re facing right now when it comes to implementing your dream marketing strategy. Is there anything that you’re facing right now that you feel like is kind of like a roadblock in trying to get to where you want to get to when it comes to your strategy?

Joe Barhoumi 

Yeah, you know, I think, I think that we’re experiencing the same challenges that most dealers are facing right now. Especially if you’re growing. So for us, the big issue is inventory, right? And that’s kind of the hot button right now for, for everybody, right? You know, if you’re going to an auction, trying to buy used cars, you know, the rates are outrageous. You know, it’s just it’s cut, super cut throughout the vehicles that you’re seeing are, you know, a lot of times vehicles that nobody else wanted, right? So the inventory is, has become our biggest challenge. But here’s the interesting thing. The reason, the really, the reason it’s become our biggest challenge is because we’ve done such a good job over the last three to six months of selling through, right? We had a ton of old age units. We sold through all of our old age. We ran specials. We, you know, campaigned on those vehicles. Fullpath has a great tool called VIN acceleration. We use that from day one to push out some of those units. But what’s really happened is we’ve outsold what we can bring in. So really two challenges there. 

One is on the used car side. The other is on the new car side. So for our Toyota dealership, getting enough Toyota’s in there’s such high demand on them anyway, getting enough allocation from Toyota, whenever you’re growing, you know, we’re probably from new Toyota’s perspective, we’re growing at about a 40 % clip year over year. So to put that into perspective, you know, we haven’t, you know, last year was probably a flat year for the dealership. But we haven’t seen growth like this at least for a long time, you know, probably during the COVID days or early COVID days, you know, they were growing like this. But what the Newbolds and the companies figured out is, you know, and I think what a lot of dealers knew is through COVID, it was easy to sell cars, right? It was pretty much, hey, yeah, demand was up. It was pretty much, hey, you want a car? We have a car. You’re buying a car, right? It was fairly simple.

Now it’s like, okay, we need to refocus. And that’s kind of what they brought me in to do was, Hey, refocus, you know, the business, the marketing, all of this stuff, and really, you know, let’s, let’s start diving in and creating again and, and bringing those customers to us versus customers just walking in. so. Yeah, I mean, it’s, you know, I probably, I probably went on a little bit of a tangent there, but you know, the bottom line is the bottom line is, you know, we.

We really are in this growth phase. We are, you know, our biggest issue right now is inventory. But with that being said, I think we do have some great strategies ahead to combat that. 

One is, you know, working through our service drive. We’re, you know, implementing a few things there with our equity tool through Fullpath, which is going to be excellent. We are starting to, we’re going to build out some pages on our website and then also market around those pages to bring in those customers who have equity or just want to sell us their car. And then third, we’re going to do some old school outbound calling and start talking to people one-on-one and discussing with them about their vehicles and what their options are. So I think, well, actually, I know we’re going to overcome that challenge fairly easily here. We’re also ramped up for summer. We did get a larger allocation recently for Toyota. So we’re already pre -selling all of those. We just know once they land, those trade-ins are going to be coming in through that as well. So we’ll be growing that used car. Yeah, we, you know, I mean, I think our strategies are fantastic. You know, it’s just a matter of, you know, kind of,

Ilana Shabtay 

That’s great, you’re really covering all your bases. Yeah.

Joe Barhoumi

You know, just kind of got to get your hands dirty and grind it out sometimes in this business, don’t you?

Ilana Shabtay 

I love it. That’s what this, that’s what automotive is all about. So I love that that that’s what you’re representing. 

And then before we sign off here, and this has been really an excellent episode, thank you again for joining. I like asking our guests what they think the predictions are for automotive. You mentioned that we’ve been kind of in this inventory challenge for a while and we’re shifting into, or it’s expanding into, you know, a bit of a challenge when it comes to interest rates. I’d love to know from your perspective what you think automotive is going to face. I mean, we’re all sort of like, hoping for a boring year because that would be great because that would mean that we don’t have much many challenges but if you have any predictions that you want to share with our listeners I’d love to hear before we sign off here.

Joe Barhoumi 

Look from where I’m sitting, I’m extremely bullish on the automotive industry. That’s kind of a marketing term for those of you who don’t know. Or not a marketing term, but a finance term I guess you’d say. But really, here’s my thoughts and what I’m seeing at the ground level is there are a lot of people, a lot of customers out there. You really just need to go find them, you need to have good strategies in your business to find those customers. And something actually I was working on just this morning is really focusing on different elements of the funnel, right, at the sales funnel. So a matter of being at the top of funnel, you’ve got to have marketing strategies for that. You’ve got to have marketing strategies for the mid funnel and then obviously for the lower funnel.

Everybody’s good at low funnel, right? Everybody’s like, hey, we know how to pick the low hanging fruit. But if you want to win long term in my eyes, you’ve got to, you’ve got to bring the awareness at top of funnel. You’ve got to do those local things. Whether that’s, you know, community awareness, you know, having a local SEO presence, talking to, you know, different businesses or highlighting some people in your dealership that are locals. I mean, you’ve got to do the top of funnel stuff that’s something I really didn’t talk about on this podcast, but something that we’re also strategizing for is that top and mid funnel content. And just being in the local community, I think is going to be huge.

Ilana Shabtay 

Yeah, and I think also, I’ll just tag onto that, that.

We’re seeing a lot about preparing for Gen Z being the big buyers now. And I think with brand loyalty going down, it’s going to be really important to start that brand awareness at the top and middle because it’s no longer about like, I know exactly what brand I want and exactly what car I want. It’s more so about really talking about the features and talking about like, if you want an SUV, for example, or if you want the best service, meaning figuring out that brand message and making sure that you talk about that before you bring them in, you know, like you said, low -hanging fruit. So really figuring out those messages to attract the next generation. So I’m looking forward to seeing.

Joe Barhoumi

Yeah, you’ve got to be able to nurture your customers and that’s only going to be more and more important. And like I was telling you before, I mean, it’s all about the customer experience. Talking about Gen Z there is, they want the best experience possible. How can we separate ourselves from the competition? The good news is thatmost of the time they’re not trying too hard, right? Your competition isn’t trying that hard in this industry still to this day. You know, if you do, if you do put your best foot forward and you’re proactive in your marketing strategy, in your customer strategy, you can really win big in this industry right now. But yeah, extremely bullish, extremely bullish 2024 and beyond.

Ilana Shabtay 

I love that. That’s great. And I think it’s going to be a great rest of the year and automotive in general. It’s a great place to be. So thanks for your energy and your excitement. And thank you again for joining Inside Auto Podcast, Joe.

Joe Barhoumi 

Thank you so much. It was great to meet you and talk to you and good luck with everything.

Ilana Shabtay 

You as well and I hope I get to come to your store one day see you guys in action. Would be nice. Yes. And for those listening, thank you for tuning in Inside Auto Podcast. You can find us on all your favorite streaming apps on Apple, Spotify, you name it. Thanks again, Joe, for joining.

Joe Barhoumi 

Thank you, have a great one.