The Ever-Evolving Automotive Industry with Chris Colsant

Chris recently joined Fullpath as the SDR Director, bringing with him a wealth of experience from his previous role at Cars and Dealer Inspire. With years of expertise in both inside and outside automotive sales, Chris is well-versed in the car selling industry and his extensive background has afforded him opportunities in learning, adopting, and embracing new technological developments.

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

• The bad data practices that are changing with dealers. 
• How dealers can manage their data more holistically. 
• The biggest disruption to the industry Chris’s experience in his career thus far. 
• Why dealers should focus on starting 2025 with more efficiency.
• Chris’s hope for the future of leasing trends and practices. 

In this episode…

Technological advancements have helped drive automotive sales and marketing in spite of the challenges in recent years including COVID-19, inventory shortages, and fluctuating interest rates. As we approach the end of 2024, there is a clear question on everyone’s mind: Will 2025 bring yet another disruption to an already complicated market?

Whether dealers embrace it or not, disruptions—whether through new technology or unforeseen events—can foster growth for individuals and the industry as a whole. These changes can enhance efficiency and effectiveness within dealerships, ultimately leading to improved customer experiences. Whether it’s a quiet year or not, 2025 is already lined up to be a year that will propel the industry forward. 

In this episode of InsideAuto, Chris Colsant, SDR Manager at Fullpath, joins host Ilana Shabtay to discuss the importance of managing data holistically as we head into the new year. He also shares his experiences with the emergence of equity mining in the automotive industry and expresses his hopes for the future of leasing.

Resources Mentioned: 

• Ilana Shabtay on LinkedIn 
• Fullpath
• Chris Colsant on LinkedIn

Sponsor for this episode…

This episode is brought to you by Fullpath.

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 (00:20)

Ilana Shabtay here, host of Inside Auto Podcasts, 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.

Fullpath enables dealers to turn their first party data into lifelong customers by unifying silent data sources and creating exceptional customer experiences To learn more visit Fullpath.com. Today’s guest is Chris Colsant Did I say that right? Colsant Colsant Chris Colsant We just went over this before we started the podcast. How did I mess it up again? Chris Colsant originally Colsante

Chris Colsant (00:57)

Yeah, whatever.

Sir.

That’s right.

Ilana Shabtay (01:07)

Italian awesome. Well, thank you for joining the podcast Chris Wow Chris has years of experience in inside and outside sales when it comes to the automotive industry knows dealers Knows, you know the market knows inventory. So I’m really excited to have Chris on the call he most recently spent some years at Cars, Dealer Inspire, and just more recently joined the Fullpath team as the SDR director. So super excited to have someone like this on the team more excited

in this moment for you to be on the podcast. We’re gonna talk a lot about just like your background, your expertise. I wanna hear what dealers are saying. What are their hesitations? What are they excited about? What do we think we’re going into 2025 with and how we’ll sort of end the year? So again, I love having people with this type of expertise on the podcast because everyone has their own perspective and thanks again for joining.

Chris Colsant (02:03)

No, thanks for having me. Please, first and foremost, stop using that word expertise. That teen term is just not even in my vocabulary. But yes, I’m very excited to be here. And thank you, Ilana I love everything that you’ve been doing with the Inside Auto podcast and watched every episode. What is this, like 110? Nice.

Ilana Shabtay (02:07)

Hahaha.

Thanks. Wow. Something like that. I mean, it’s like, this is an honor for me because I have my biggest fan on the show. Amazing. Okay, well, first, before we even talk about the good stuff, before we get to the good stuff, how did you get into automotive? How did you find yourself in this industry?

Chris Colsant (02:24)

That’s right. I’m here.

Yeah, so very interesting. I spent my four years at Eastern Illinois University with Mr. Tony Romo, those that know Tony Romo, quarterback, former quarterback of the Cowboys

and after graduating with a degree in marketing, I jumped into a Fortune 500 company called Cintas, the uniform people, and that was very short-lived for the mere fact that my best friend at the time would always come to the weekend events and different parties, family parties, driving different cars, Corvettes, you name it, and I was always kind of like not only enamored, but wondering like…

How does a salesman turn into a sales manager that quickly in the automotive industry? And that led me to the best kept secret that is the automotive industry. And all I had to do was swallow that pride because I came out of college with a degree in marketing going

Ilana Shabtay (03:17)

very true.

Chris Colsant (03:22)

do I really want to be in the car business with the stigma that it once had and kind of to this day seems to carry. So that was kind of the pill that I had to swallow and ever since then I can only work my way obviously through sales and sales management but general sales manager and beyond. So I spent 12 years with a large auto group in Chicago and the last seven as you mentioned with Dealer Inspire I’m very blessed for both of those opportunities and part of my journey.

Ilana Shabtay (03:49)

Yeah, and it really probably gives you so much perspective being on the retail side and the vendor side and understanding the challenges of both. You had mentioned that there’s a stigma around automotive. Do you feel like, I mean, I’m not in the States anymore. I’m obviously very close to the market and come often, but it’s not like I go to buy my car in the States anymore. I feel like the stigma’s getting better. Am I living in a bubble?

Chris Colsant (04:14)

No, not a bubble. It’s getting better, but I think getting back to just the blocking and tackling like we’ve heard a lot is happening, the fundamentals. Those fundamentals, it’s kind of, if you don’t know what you don’t know, and I think that there’s been a lot of, I don’t want to say bad practice, but I think the teachings maybe are still antiquated in some way.

Ilana Shabtay (04:20)

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah.

So we can definitely work on that because it’s such an exciting industry and when you’re actually in it, you understand how good the people are. But it’s unfortunate that we still have that stigma. But I’ll predict that within 10 years we’ll see that go away. And before we get into more predictions, because I would love to talk a little bit about what’s going to happen in 2025 according to you. Talk a little bit about, know now specifically at Fullpath you’re leading an SDR team, so you’re of living and breathing what it’s like

Chris Colsant (04:52)

Right.

Ilana Shabtay (05:08)

call dealers and understand what their hesitations might be. But beyond that, beyond the month or two month that you’ve been at Fullpath just thinking in general the past six months when you are talking to dealers, what do you see as their biggest hesitation when it comes to tech adopt, like change, but specifically tech adoption?

Chris Colsant (05:29)

I think it’s the, back tonight to use that mantra of you don’t know what you don’t know. I think it’s, we don’t realize we’re sitting on a gold mine right now of the data, first third party. And I think that what it is is that we’ve been, and I say we as a car dealer myself, as ingrained of those bad practices and bad data that essentially we don’t have a good way to scrub, cleanse, and or unify that. And again, I don’t mean to be biased with Fullpath, but that’s kind of what obviously takes flight. And I think that,

Ilana Shabtay (05:33)

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Chris Colsant (05:57)

Making that data actionable is something that’s never really been on the cusp or been exploited to the strength that it really is. And I think now that we have the ability to do so, I think you’re going to see a lot of dealer partners jump on.

Ilana Shabtay (06:11)

But do you feel, I appreciate that answer and I think you’ve really hit it and I think that’s accurate. Do you feel like dealers

don’t know what they don’t know, that can lead to lot of hesitations. Do you think that the education in the industry is getting better? And if not, how do you think we should be really educating dealers on what you just said, right? They’re all sitting on this goldmine of data. They have thousands and tens of thousands of customers in their database. How can we be better at educating the dealer community so that they can have the most sophisticated marketing and speak to shoppers that want to be reached at, right, at that level?

Chris Colsant (06:50)

I think it’s a great, great thought and insight is to kind of reset and level set the time commodity that we all have, right? So we have five different vendors that we have five different meetings with, and we have to hold each one of them accountable and vice versa. And I think being able to unify all of that under one kind of ecosystem, holistically, Fullpath kind of enables our dealer partners to do so. And I think that education piece is how do we save time through our day to day in our workflow? Because at the end of the day,

Ilana Shabtay (07:02)

Mm-hmm.

Chris Colsant (07:20)

You can only do so much with so many hours in a day. And when you utilize and automate deployment, that’s when you can really start to kind of scale and see the hyper-focused messaging at scale take flight. And that education piece to answer your question is simply, what are we doing from a holistic standpoint? How can we remove certain kind of incumbents and make life easier for us while exploiting the heck out of that goldmine that we were just talking about? So it’s long-winded answer, but hopefully that touched on it.

Ilana Shabtay (07:45)

Yeah, that’s a… No, it’s actually really insightful. Like, I wonder if we should start having conversations with dealers and for the dealers listening, you know, feel free to message us. I wonder if the conversation should really be around that, like…

trying to understand where their lack of efficiencies are or where they’re spending too much time, whether that’s in marketing or something else, just to start a conversation and really give input on how tech in general and AI and generative AI can actually boost efficiencies while also keeping employees happier, more productive, more strategic, less monotonous, manual, et cetera. So that’s an interesting approach to education is also it’s just like trying

Chris Colsant (08:23)

Mm-hmm.

Ilana Shabtay (08:29)

to understand where dealers feel that pain and then figuring out a way to kind of like weave in technology to help them with the pains and the challenges. Interesting and just before we move on to some of the predictions, since you’ve been in the industry for so long and maybe this even happened when you were on the retail side but can you talk about a time where you really felt the impact of a new technology? Maybe it was like I don’t know mobile websites or whatever it might have been.

Chris Colsant (08:32)

Mm-hmm.

Bingo.

Ilana Shabtay (08:58)

Can you like, I know that this might take like a second to think, but can you think of like a revolutionary software or technology or change that like really changed your system, whether it was on the retail side or on the software side? And like you sort of experienced that. So what was that like and what was that thing that actually made the change?

Chris Colsant (09:10)

soon.

It was two words, equity mining. Equity mining as it entered automotive was a very underutilized tool and no one really knew how to use it properly, right? And how to have those. I’m dating myself now, so this would be 2007, 2008, and it started with like the GM list of.

Ilana Shabtay (09:18)

Interesting.

When would you say this was introduced to non-motive?

Okay.

Chris Colsant (09:37)

The GM had a Smart Buy program, they called, for any GM dealers that had been in the business for many years, I’m sure know, with GM Smart Buy. And that Smart Buy program’s no longer. That was essentially a list that was derived to try and acquire back those vehicles, obviously, to put them back into a different Smart Buy. It’s a form of leasing now, obviously, but my old point in saying that was equity mining was my kind of bread and butter, and that’s what not only helped me kind of grow through in the industry, but to answer your question,

Ilana Shabtay (09:45)

Okay.

Yeah.

Chris Colsant (10:07)

100% was a disruptor in the industry with regards to like, wait, how do we approach this with the DMS connectivity? What is the actual like penny perfect? It doesn’t need to be penny perfect. So there were so many like just trials and tribulations through equity mining that I found many alike in my peers were having troubles with. I kind of took that as my…

Ilana Shabtay (10:18)

That’s so interesting.

Chris Colsant (10:29)

skill set or my expertise if you will and I told you I wouldn’t use that word and that really that really helped my growth throughout the automotive industry and I think to this day it kind of comes back

Ilana Shabtay (10:33)

He he.

Chris Colsant (10:39)

full circle, which is great, is the fact that not only is it a well-oiled machine now at many dealerships, and if it’s not, it needs to be, but the fact that there’s only so many, like I said, hours in manpower, womanpower in a day that you can utilize that equity mining tool. So to be able to take that to scale, I think, is just a huge win as we’ve continued to evolve in equity mining. So that is 100% my answer, is equity mining has been a disruptor and was something that was so foreign to myself and others alike, and again, it’s become so ingrained now in the dealership

Ilana Shabtay (11:01)

That’s cool.

Chris Colsant (11:09)

kind of fabric, it’s just a matter of who’s doing it right and what are those words because sales are never lost by a few dollars, they’re lost by a few words. So it’s how are we approaching that.

Ilana Shabtay (11:19)

That’s interesting and it’s cool because you probably saw the evolution of the process and the technology when it comes to equity mining. So that that’s like a really interesting thing to witness. And I hope that we can see some of those trends in the end of the last quarter of 2024. We’ve I mean, as an industry, this industry has seen what it has been way too interesting for too many years. And we really need like a boring year ahead of us. But that being said, with like Corona and

Chris Colsant (11:25)

Mm-hmm.

Hahaha

Ilana Shabtay (11:50)

inventory shortage and interest rates and now I mean the whole the whole South I mean Florida is getting hit like crazy in weather and it’s just unbelievable what’s happening and I’m sure the dealers right now are really suffering from it so I’m hoping that they can have a nice comeback after the hurricanes are done because right now Tampa is really unfortunately getting hit again. What do you think? Yeah, of course.

Chris Colsant (12:14)

And on that point, on that point, if I may, just real quick, we are all saying our prayers and we want to make sure that everyone, there’s anything that we can do or I can do personally regarding around your just digital efforts around the tragedy that we’re experiencing, that everyone’s experiencing, please let us know. We would be more than happy to do so.

Ilana Shabtay (12:19)

Yes.

Yeah. Yeah.

So all of these…

these events, way too again, interesting events that are hitting the automotive industry. Where do you think or what are some of your predictions for the market in the beginning of 2025 as we sort of end the year? Whether it can be pertinent to digital and technology or just in general, like where do you see interest rates coming in? What’s used inventory gonna look like? Anything that you think, I would love for you to share.

Chris Colsant (12:58)

I think that the, as you mentioned in the beginning part of the discussion to the, we hear blocking and tackling, getting back to the blocking and tackling. I think defining what that is at your store is different from store to store that I’ve seen. And I think that is a, is a, just a universal challenge that we’ve got to make sure that again, there’s consistency and accountability in everything that we’re doing. And I think that defining what those look like is going to be, pivotal to, being efficient in 2025, because that is kind of the word,

Ilana Shabtay (13:06)

Yeah.

Chris Colsant (13:28)

that I want to cascade through 2025 is efficiency because that correlates back to time, money, everything. And if we are efficient in everything that we’re doing, I’m one those like time hackers too, you know, looking at how do you brush your teeth faster, do all that. So those macro micro economics.

Ilana Shabtay (13:31)

That’s funny.

Yeah. Save a minute here or save a minute there. No, I love that you’re saying that because…

NADA 2024 this year. I interviewed one of our clients and one of my good friends in the industry, one of my dear friends, April Simmons, who runs the marketing team at Horn Auto Group. And she was on Inside Auto Podcast. I did like five minute segments and maybe we primed you since you’ve listened to every episode, but I asked her, what does she think this year is gonna be about? And she said, this is the year of efficiencies. 2024 is the year of efficiency. No, I love it. I think there’s consistency. think it’s great. No, no, no, no,

Chris Colsant (13:55)

Mmm.

no.

I know. did not. Yeah, definitely not plagiarizing or copycatting.

Ilana Shabtay (14:17)

No, no, no, no, we know that. know that. I’m sure April is honored and honestly, like it’s nice to see the consistencies in the industry from different angles. Like it’s great that we’re all working towards a more efficient, well-oiled machine that I think can really help dealerships focus on other things. But yeah, it was just, love that you said that because it just brought me back to what April said, which is always nice. It’s always nice to mention her on here. And I think that it probably started in this year and will continue

Chris Colsant (14:41)

That’s awesome.

Ilana Shabtay (14:47)

in 2025 and I think data efficiencies is going to be a big one. No, no.

Chris Colsant (14:52)

I don’t know why I didn’t say that. That’s what I take my answer back. Data efficiency is number one. No, but you get the point. I couldn’t agree more. is. Because data drives all the decisions, right? Data drives decisions across the board for even a personal life, for me. And I think that allowing that to seep into your dealership is paramount, especially to create efficiencies. So data efficiency.

Ilana Shabtay (14:58)

Awesome. Yeah, of course.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, definitely. I hope, yes. So I hope we see that and I hope we see a lot of success this year and a boring year, which would be great for us. As an industry, feel like the automotive industry deserves a boring year. Anything else you want to share with us before we sign off here?

Chris Colsant (15:31)

get leasing. I’d like to talk, just not talk about, but just if there’s any OEMs out there that are listening to this, if there’s a way that we could adjust residuals, adjust money factors, make leasing more consumer friendly like it once was, that’s obviously going to play a huge role in moving the needle.

Ilana Shabtay (15:35)

Yeah.

Interesting. Yeah, I agree with that.

Chris Colsant (15:49)

Because we have a lot of folks, from an equity mining standpoint, you’re seeing nowadays you’re taking folks out of leasing and you can’t put them back into another lease based on the parameters and ways that they’ve been set up now. It’s just not financially feasible. So you’re seeing a lot of folks being taken out of their lease into a retail contract and keeping that payment in the same vault. So there’s just a lot of different nuances that I think can help lease penetration, but that’s going to come from obviously OEMs like and cascade down.

Ilana Shabtay (16:07)

Interesting.

But what do you think is influencing that? Is it the interest rates or is it something else? Okay.

Chris Colsant (16:21)

It’s a mixture. the value, the valuation of the pre-market or pre-driven vehicles, when those prices kind of skyrocketed after 1920 in there, they haven’t really hovered back down. So obviously residuals and comparison values to said lease loan to value is creating a little bit of, what’s the word? Just a bigger financial gap that would ultimately make it

Ilana Shabtay (16:29)

Mm-hmm.

like a discrepancy, a gap, yeah.

Chris Colsant (16:49)

feasible or even yeah. So like leases less these that were leasing cars for four or five hundred bucks a month are now eight hundred dollars a month yeah

Ilana Shabtay (16:51)

Interesting.

Yes, and also are people extending their lease more? Like I feel like people are, they’re buying them out, they’re staying in their cars longer.

Chris Colsant (17:03)

or buying them out. So a lot of them are buying them out.

Yep. So you’re seeing a lot of folks that are buying out their lease now when they realize the harsh reality of, gees Louise unless I go into a finance contract or write a check for the vehicle, you know, it’s hard to go lease to lease. Which I’ve done. I’ve done lit. I’ve leased my last 10 cars and this was the first year I stopped.

Ilana Shabtay (17:14)

of yep.

Yeah, that’s such a good call out. Yeah.

Interesting. Well, yeah, well, if there are manufacturers on here, please help us. This sounds like something we can focus on as an industry in 2025. I love it. Thank you so much, Chris. As I said, you brought the knowledge here. You dropped it. So thank you so much. You know so much more about automotive. So it’s just so nice to be able to learn from you. So thank you again for joining Inside Auto Podcast. And for those listening, you can always tune in on your favorite channels and your favorite outlets. If it’s Spotify, Apple, you name it, insideautopodcast.com.

Chris Colsant (17:35)

truth.

stop.

Ilana Shabtay (17:57)

Thanks again, Chris.

Chris Colsant (17:58)

Hey, thanks, Ilana.