Revolutionizing Auto Dealerships with Data and AI With Dan Banister and Yaron Saghiv

Dan Banister is the owner of Banister Automotive, with a career that pivoted from aspiring NBA athlete to automotive magnate. After college basketball, he transitioned into federal law enforcement before finding his passion in the car industry. Dan has built a dealership that not only sells cars but also embraces cutting-edge technologies like those offered by Fullpath and UVeye.

Yaron Saghiv is the CMO of UVeye, a company specializing in high-tech automotive inspections. His rich background in startups and technology led him from co-founding consumer companies to a key player in the automotive tech scene. Yaron’s firsthand experiences with car issues sparked an understanding of automotive needs, inspiring him to contribute to an industry that is a staple in the American economy.

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

• The inception of UVeye
• How Fullpath’s AI-driven system helps dealerships target their market
• UVeye’s role in analyzing vehicle data 
• Integrating data for smarter service marketing campaigns in automotive retail

In this episode…

AI has revolutionized almost every industry, transforming how people approach operations, decision-making, and customer interactions. How, then, does this influence the automotive industry?

Dan Banister, an automotive dealer who has integrated revolutionary AI-driven systems like Fullpath and UVeye into his business, explains how they fulfill previously unrecognized needs and improve dealership operations. This allows for data analytics and actionable insights effortlessly.

Tune in to this episode of the InsideAuto Podcast, as Ilana Shabtay sits down with Dan Banister, owner of Banister Automotive, and Yaron Saghiv, CMO of UVeye. They delve into the transformative effects of AI and data analysis on automotive retail. Both guests discuss the importance of adapting to new technologies, engagement, and the overall service experience.

Resources mentioned in this episode

• Fullpath
• Ilana Shabtay on LinkedIn 
• Dan Banister on LinkedIn
• Banister Automotive
• Yaron Saghiv on LinkedIn
• UVeye

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

Intro  0:02  

Welcome to InsideAuto podcast where we feature everyone and anyone you’d want to talk to you in and out of the automotive industry.

Ilana Shabtay  0:12  

Ilana Shabtay, I’m VP marketing of Fullpath. I’m here with Dan Banister, owner of Banister Automotive and Yaron Saghiv, who is CMO at UVeye. Thanks for having me. I took over their booth so that we can have a conversation. Dan the man, right, that’s, that’s what you’re known for.

Dan Banister  0:31  

I guess. Yeah.

Ilana Shabtay  0:32  

How’d you get into automotive? 

Dan Banister  0:33  

Right out of college. I was playing basketball in college and I thought I was going to be making it to the NBA, but it didn’t happen. And I had to make money doing something. I thought I was really after college. I thought I was going to have to, if basketball didn’t work out, I was going to be in federal law enforcement – FBI. So I started that path down there. And I needed a job in the meantime. And you know what better thing, I love cars. So I bought a car from a Nissan dealership like a week prior, went and applied, and they hired me and just like that. 

Ilana Shabtay  1:00  

You got sent into automotive and never got out. Basically like all of us. Amazing. And you? Your own?

Yaron Saghiv  1:07  

My relationship with automotive or? 

Ilana Shabtay  1:11  

Or your relationship with basketball. 

Yaron Saghiv  1:13  

Basketball, that was…

Dan Banister  1:14  

Hey, wait, wait. That’s my story there. 

Yaron Saghiv  1:17  

Exactly. So, like a lot of people from tech that are not from automotive. Yeah, my background is in startups for now too many years, co-founding more consumer companies. But my original automotive experience is my first car, which was my grandfather’s actually, a 1988. Fiat Luna that no one would know what it is. But it’s kind of a station wagon from Fiat that was manufactured in Brazil. And what I remember is one time, I drove down the road, and I kind of tried to brake and my foot, got, you know, to the very end, and the brake just broke. And another time I had a transmission stick in my hand. So it made me understand a bit more about cars than I wanted to. And then obviously for the last five, six years with UVeye, you know, it’s a fantastic industry. And we’ve been really privileged to meet such good people and see what a staple it is in the American economy. So it’s all fun, really.

Dan Banister  2:14  

It’s interesting with his company, they fulfilled a need that nobody really knew we needed. I mean, when you’re starting off with a business first you got to see if there’s a need. They found a need and then they told the dealership, hey, this is what you need, just like with Apple and Steve Jobs. Who would have thought that we needed an iPhone or a computer walking around with a camera, music player, video, all that kind of stuff. And that’s why I kind of see UVeye as a technology that nobody really knew that we needed. But now it’s here. And I mean, it’s a phenomenal system. Same thing with Fullpath. I mean, the way that your system works over everybody else, the information that we get and how you guys re-engage the customers in the portal that you have, that my staff and go in there and see, you know, the people that are engaged in the market that are the low hanging fruit, it’s a lot different than a lot of other technologies that are out there. 

Ilana Shabtay  3:14  

Yeah, well, we appreciate that. And at some point, hopefully, we’ll actually be able to connect our technologies with all the data 

Dan Banister  3:19  

Yeah because you’re AI driven and you’re not so much, but my kind of. No, not really. 

Yaron Saghiv  3:25  

We are. Well, that’s how it analyzes the photos. But also on the analytical side we’re developing more and more dashboard recommendations which are smarter underwriting.

Dan Banister  3:39  

And that’s the presentation, I mean, you have all that stuff, but how do you present it to the dealers for information that they can actually use? So I think that’s what Fullpath has figured out. Alright, we have all this AI but how are we going to present it to the dealers that make it easy that they’ll actually use the information and, you know, the unique thing about your system is that AI is looking at how the customer interaction like this, if people are looking more for service and looking for more sales, and they can switch where the spend is. So if you know if it’s more service driven, you know, then it’s gonna spit your budget and time spent on service, if you want more new car use cars, it’s kind of the same thing. And you know, we looked at it the other day, and the system was spending too much on service. So we had to cut that back because we wanted to focus more on sales, but your system is continually saying hey, we need to do more service. So maybe, maybe we probably just need to increase our budget. But it’s just interesting that all this information that we’re getting from your portal and the AI is how it’s driving, you know how we’re spending our dollars with Amazon,

Yaron Saghiv  4:44  

But imagine that you have this way to slice information on the retail and marketing side. And if you drive your car, which you have a few systems of UVeye. You drive your car through the UVeye system. You have the data of people like marginal tread depth, right or expired aged tires and we know that maybe they weren’t sold. But we can extract that you can automate on your service marketing campaigns, according to okay, come back for a free call washing, it happens right?

Ilana Shabtay  5:08  

Als the customer, right? So then you feed it back into the customer data platform and you’re able to actually do full circle customers for life. 

Dan Banister  5:15  

Yeah, so that means that Fullpath can serve up an ad to them and say hey, I know you declined your service last time on these tires. But this is where you’re at. And this is predictability. You only have another month or two on your tires. 

Ilana Shabtay  5:28  

And that messaging can really hit home. 

Yaron Saghiv  5:30

Yeah.

Dan Banister  5:31

Good point. Good point. 

Yaron Saghiv  5:32  

I mean, it’s very exciting because we’re both companies from Israel. I mean, for us that Israel is such a small country, but we don’t have any active OEMs. But there’s so much smart mobility and automotive tech coming out of Israel. You know, there’s a lot of reasons for it. But it’s just very fun for us and exciting to see a couple of partners and companies like Fullpay, like Fuse that came out of Israel in our setting to thousands of dealers.

Dan Banister  5:59

What’s Fuse? 

Yaron Saghiv  6:00

So fuse is a payment platform.

Ilana Shabtay  6:02  

Yeah, they’re like a point of sale system, a desktop tool, and they do dynamic payments, they have all these different options for just how you can get people the best experience when they’re checking out. But they also have an incentive, like they basically take all the incentives and make sure that they’re serving up the best incentive and the best payment plans to the consumer.

Dan Banister  6:23  

So it’s like a CRM desking tool, something like that? t

Ilana Shabtay  6:27  

They have a few different tools and that’s one of them. So they’re right in the entrance if you want to check them out. But Israel is obviously one of the tech centers of the world. So we got to get in there. 

Yaron Saghiv  6:39  

You got to be friends with Ilana, she’ll take you to Israel before.

Dan Banister  6:41  

I see that.

Ilana Shabtay  6:43  

I’ll take you no worries.

Outro  6:48  

Thanks for listening to InsideAuto podcast. Check out our other episodes with top entrepreneurs and industry leaders.