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Being a Company Man

Posted by Chris Vitale on July 24, 2013 at 1:53pm

Throughout my entire career, and even today, I’ve always been accused of “drinking the Kool-Aid” or “brown-nosing” the owner, etc. I’ve always been lucky enough to love where I work. Sure, I’ve left jobs but always to better myself and for greater opportunities. I don’t have one bad thing to say about anyplace I’ve ever worked. I’m still in regular contact with almost all of my former bosses/owners. As a green pea sales associate I remember paying for personalized license plates that advertised our company slogan. And today, my license plate says “iMagic” because I’m proud of where I work. For the last 8 years of my career I’ve worn a company shirt 80% of the time and that includes nights and weekends. Again, because I’m proud of where I work.

My owner and I were traveling for work one day and we went out to eat, both of us were in store shirts and the person we were talking with commented on it and without hesitation he responded that he wanted everybody to know that he was “a company man” and I did too. I can’t remember how many cars I’ve sold by somebody coming up to me because of my company shirt but I’d guess around 100. Some of them even started off as complaints and eventually turned into a sale. I card everybody, even today, if somebody is interested in a vehicle I card them and when they contact me I set them up with one of our partner dealers. This past weekend I sold 3 cars for a partner dealer in Cleveland and had only met the people in a restaurant and they were actually upset with my service department. They saw the shirt, came to complain and realized I was the General Manager and we joked about me being the right guy to complain to. 24 months later, a 3 car deal…

Being a company man pays me dividends and it’s done so my entire professional sales career. I simply won’t work for a company or an individual that I don’t respect. There’s nothing I hate more than the “doom and gloom” Chicken Little types that think the world is coming to an end every single day. They always find bad in everything. Here are the funnier ones I’ve personally made terminations over:

  • We had a killer sales weekend and Monday morning the gas card hit its limit so it’s declined, Chicken Little spreads the rumor “we’re going bankrupt” in less than 45 seconds!
  • We have a billing dispute with a vendor (their mistake as it turns out) so we hold off paying the bill until it’s settled which we’re diligently working on and Chicken Little asks in a sales meeting “why don’t we pay our bills?”
  • I interview one candidate as a favor to another General Manager and Chicken Little immediately spreads “we’re all getting fired and being replaced!”
  • I can’t get a signal on my cell phone inside the store so I take a call from my owner outside and Chicken Little announces “I’ve seen this before, when the GM starts looking for a job, we all better start looking!”

In closing, I suggest hiring as many company men (and women) as possible. They’re a positive catalyst, hardworking, hard charging and truly and deeply care about your customers. They also don’t pay attention to the store/office rumors and are never seen whispering around the coffee machine. As for the “Chicken Little’s” of the world… Eradicate them from your organization with extreme prejudice. Their negativity is deadly and contagious and will ultimately impact your clients. I recently asked somebody “if it’s so bad, why not quit?” the response: “I need a job.” Ah, yes… a job. DOOM AND GLOOM NEED NOT APPLY!

*Chris Vitale is Vice President of Sales atiMagicLab.  He has over 15 years of in dealership experience and is quick to call it like he sees it.  Follow Chris @thecrmgod on Twitter.

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iMagicLab Brings Together CRM Think Tank For System Development Guidance

Posted by Ralph Paglia on June 17, 2013 at 3:21pm

Keith Latman and His iMagicLab Team Create Customer Relationship Management (CRM) "Think Tank" By Assembling Auto Industry Thought Leaders, Innovative Dealers, Experienced Development Team Catalysts and Extensive Resources to Craft the Future of Automotive CRM...

 

On Thursday June 13, 2013 in the early afternoon Sean V. Bradley and I left the DealerSynergy offices in Audubon, NJ and drove down to Baltimore to participate in an iMagicLab hosted event and meeting.  Sean and I had both received invitations without knowing about the other. I had been at DealerSynergy to record video clips for training sessions within the soon to be launched Automotive Digital Training Channel. Before anyone accuses Keith Latman of grandiose concepts, I will unashamedly describe what emerged at iMagicLab on Friday as a "CRM Think Tank" session...

 

The attendees were an impressive mix of advanced CRM "Success Story" car dealers, consultants, thought leaders and experienced CRM developers that had previously worked for iMagicLab competitors. Sean V. Bradley and i rarely get excited about the same things when it comes to dealer management software and applications, but in today's case we both saw Keith open the doors to a barn with an "I'll be damned if that ain't an actual Unicorn in there" look on our faces as what iMagicLab has created with their upcoming launch of CRMsuite revealed itself to our harshly critical inspection...

The founder of iMagicLab, Keith Latman and I have some colorful.. ahem, "history" going back a few years. When I spoke to him about it, he told me that knowing i would be closely looking for "flies in the ointment" is one of the reasons why he invited me... Wanted to get some seriously non-ass-kissing feedback from someone who knows CRM app development who would poke and jab at what he is getting ready to launch...

The reality of what happened during the iMagicLab CRM Think Tank discussions was that Joe Webb took enough carefully aimed shots at Keith Latman's assumptions and dealership work flows that I was able to focus my questions on identifying many of the incredible number of data sources, algorithms, and (for real) artificial intelligence capabilities feeding a series of dynamic real time action items to be executed by dealership employees. All of which is being served up in a modular GUI that will most certainly replace the overwhelming frustration created by typical (and dreaded) "Daily Work Plans", which define each user's core list of daily action items, and is generated by most of today's current crop of CRM systems...
 
I almost HATE to admit it, but Keith Latman and Chris Vitale got me more excited and eager to test drive the soon to be in limited release iMagicLab "CRMsuite" than I have been about any other CRM application in over ten years... At this point, getting me excited about the technical architecture of a CRM solution is nearly impossible, because our industry has been stuck in a CRM application rut for at least ten years!

What i saw on Friday was the iMagicLab team build out of a "CRMsuite" branded solution that delivers on Keith Latman's radical new big data driven approach and system design. Every aspect of CRMsuite has the potential (if it actually works as shown) to provide digitally competent dealership teams with customer engagement capabilities far beyond what any other auto industry CRM development team has ever attempted to do... I believe that the iMagicLab CRMsuite may be capable of enabling dealers to deploy a radical new approach to customer engagement and communication.

The core activity generating engine appears to be designed to predict a series of communications and customer contact most likely to result in a sale based on empirical analysis of the customer's information, activities and social signals. few observers may be willing to agree with me at this point, but i believe CRMsuite may trigger the equivalent of an arms race among automotive CRM developers and dealership suppliers.

The biggest caveat I sense are the questions around "can the iMagicLab team, led by Keith and his top managers sell, deliver, install and ramp dealers up on the CRMsuite at any significant levels of scale and dealer network penetration?"

I may be biased after 20 years of working on several CRM development, sales and implementation teams, but I see a lot of potential for dealer demand for CRMsuite to far exceed what the existing iMagicLab team has the ability to deliver and install... The limited sneak preview and deep architectural designs we saw at iMagicLab on Friday were THAT impressive!

Meet 3 Automotive Technology Professionals Leading the iMagicLab CRM Think Tank

Keith Latman | Chief Executive Officer

Keith Latman is Chief Executive Officer / Co-Founder of iMagicLab (formerly iCarMagic). Latman drives technology, sales, marketing and architecture decisions across all iMagicLab products to ensure the product direction is consistent with the overall strategy of the company and the needs of the marketplace. Over the past 3 years he has trained thousands of car dealer personnel, written over 75 published articles and has spoken at major industry events and seminars nationwide.

Latman has broad experience in the sales, hardware, software and services sectors, having spent more than 12 years in senior management roles in the IT industry and over 7 years in the automobile retailing space. Prior to founding iMagicLab, he started and ran Internet departments in the San Francisco Bay Area (one of which sold over 1200 cars in a single year) and helped start many innovative companies including RetailTRAC (Sold to Minow LLC), MicroPOS (Sold to Micros) and Microworkz.com.

For more information about Keith or if you just like to read BLOG's click here: www.microworkz.com

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Tom Harsha | President of Auto Division

Tom Harsha is currently the Vice President of Sales for iMagicLab and has been with the company since 2007. Tom is a 20 year veteran of the automotive industry, including Sales Management, Finance, Internet Sales, Business Development Center leadership, and Training Consulting. Additionally, Tom has held positions on the American Honda Motors e-Dealer Advisory board, as well as various roles with Polk and NADA Dealer round table and Industry events. He was featured as a top trainer by Dealix Corporation in 2005 and is a regular contributor on DealerRefresh, ADM and Idea Exchange.

Tom is happily married, has two very energetic children and highly values his time with family. In addition to helping dealers create a winning process to maximize CRM utilization, he loves traveling with his family and watching his wife conduct orchestra concerts. His hobbies include playing golf and continuously building the next best home theater system.

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Chris Vitale | Vice President of Sales

Chris Vitale is currently Vice President of Sales for iMagicLab. He has only ever sold cars in his professional life; iMagicLab is his first career outside of the retail automobile industry, first serving as National Sales Director and now Vice President. His previously held retail positions include Sales Associate, Internet Manager, Finance Manager, Sales Manager, Used Car Manager, General Sales Manager and General Manager (in that order). He has a wide range of experience including domestic and import brands in highline and high volume arenas.

What makes Chris unique is that his perspective includes relevant and hands on experience, having served his customers for over 20 years, and his academic background. Chris holds an A.A. (Associate of Arts) with a concentration in Business, a B.A. (Bachelor of Arts) with a concentration in Business and an M.B.A. (Master of Business Administration). He also achieved Executive Manager approval and certification with two separate manufacturers for which he ran stores.

Having been a very hands-on General Manager for the last 5 years of his automotive career, Chris understands the needs of dealers. Coming from stores that embraced CRM, he knows what it takes to ensure total success, culture change and complete buy in from sales associates to executive management and beyond.

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