The best customer conversations start before a buyer walks into the dealership. Jessica Stafford discusses how deal intelligence gives sales and F&I teams more context about customer needs, budget and financing preferences. Learn how connected data can reduce friction in the car-buying process, support more personalized recommendations and help dealers build stronger customer relationships.
Episode Transcript
JESS: If we can leverage the connected technology we have nowadays and data to make this whole process faster and more streamlined, it becomes a conversation. You’re still a human being behind that text, and you’re starting the human-to-human interaction even earlier in the process. So you can actually build that relationship earlier and stronger by using technology to enable it.
INTRODUCTION
MATT: Hello and welcome to Driving Impact. I’m your host Matt Maher and I am back with Jessica Stafford. Jess, how are you doing today?
JESS: I am doing great. So excited to be here with you.
MATT: I’m really excited to have you back because last time we chatted, you said something that has really stuck with me, and I want to use that as a springboard into this episode. You had mentioned we talked about the car buying process, and you said “when the process is connected, your average manager starts performing like your best one.” I’d love to pull that thread today. And let’s start with saying, like, what makes the best salesperson?
JESS: In automotive, the idea of all of these processes being connected, the data being connected, is what actually allows, you know, the salesperson at the dealership or the F&I person at the dealership to truly understand their customer, and they can give them this amazing experience. And when consumers out there have amazing experiences, they buy cars and they become loyal and they come back to that dealership for service and they build kind of this lifelong, you know, ideally multi-generational relationship with their dealer.
MATT: Awesome. So that’s what I’m wanting to focus on today. By having more access to data and tools, we can strengthen our salespeople’s emotional intelligence, their ability to have a better read on the customers, to be more trustworthy throughout the sales process, just really giving them the leg up on where customers are coming from before they even enter the dealership. But before we do that, can I interest you in one more lightning round?
LIGHTNING ROUND
MATT: Number one, the moment in a deal where most salespeople lose it.
JESS: The online moment where a customer’s trying to get some information about the car and the dealer’s saying, “When can you come in, so I can talk to you about that.” That’s the moment you lose the most interest.
MATT: Lost it before they even had it. Number two. One thing dealers assume customers care about that they actually don’t.
JESS: They care about price, but what they care the most about is that they’re getting a good value. And so I think the nuance there is that are you getting the cheapest price? It’s not about the cheapest; it’s about the right value and what’s fair.
MATT: Transparent pricing. Does it hurt back-end gross or help it?
JESS: Helps.
MATT: Nice. All right. One price, no haggle retailing. Threat to F&I or the future of it?
JESS: I think we’re going to see accommodation here into the future, but I think I don’t think it hurts. I think it helps in the long run. I think it helps customers to feel confident.
MATT: AI in the deal room, tool or threat?
JESS: Total tool. It’s going to make a huge difference to those who embrace it.
MATT: Congratulations, you survived yet another lightning round with fantastic answers. Give yourself a round of applause.
JESS: All right, all right.
STATS CHECK
MATT: In Cox’s own Car Buyer Journey study, yeah, you asked buyers to name the most stressful moments in the purchase process. So I’m going to start naming what these were, and I want to get your reaction to these.
JESS: Okay.
MATT: Waiting around at the dealership came first, selecting F&I products, the warranties and financing options presented before you sign came second. So this was a study from January 2026 so it’s very much the pulse of where buyers are now. I’d love to get your kind of reaction on those.
JESS: I’ve been doing this for 20 years with Cox. Every year, our studies showed the most important component for consumers to be more satisfied in this process is that it takes less time. Because this is such a long process for consumers, and they do so much research ahead of time when they walk into the dealership. To your point, in this study, if they have to wait around, it feels inefficient. It feels like I’m wasting time. Quite frankly, it’s also giving them more time to change their mind. To get more nervous, to get more anxious about the deal, and so this meets on both sides. Like, you know, dealers see more success when they’re able to meet the customer where they are and be efficient with the time it takes to do the deal.
Then the second area you were talking about, the stress from F&I choices, from warranty choices, what we consistently find is that this is stressful because it costs money, right? It adds more expense to this already high expense purchase that a customer is making. So that adds stress to it. That adds concern. But also, this is the area that you or I, as a normal person buying a car, we don’t know a lot about. Yeah. The financials, the warranties. What are these add-ons? What does that even mean? What do I need for my tires? What? And so, that causes a ton of stress and anxiety because not only is it added cost, but it’s something we just don’t feel as comfortable and confident about.
DEEP DIVE
MATT: Your 20 years of experience, you’ve seen the best, the worst, everything in between. What are the best sales teams actually doing differently, like in the room? Not just knowing more information, but what are they doing differently in that room?
JESS: Look, we all learn this. We learn this as students in school. Active listening, intentional listening. We learn this in our professional lives. Don’t ask a question and then be thinking about how you’re going to respond to the answer. Ask the question and then really intentionally listen. And I think in this case. That is the key to success.
Let’s not forget, this is, you know, the second biggest purchase that most people will make in their lives next to a home, and that’s stressful. So I think for a dealership, meeting customers where they are, listening to them, and remembering that we talk a lot about digitizing this process. We talk a lot about all of the amazing softwares and tools and digital processes that help to make this more streamlined. But at the end of the day, buying a car is a human to human interaction. Even if it ends up behind a screen the whole way through, and consumers want to be able to ask AI and chat and technology questions, you know, and they’re happy to do that behind a screen. But we still consistently see that there is some comfort in a customer being able to ask a person the questions that they have at the end of the day about the dealership.
MATT: I totally feel you. There’s something that feels great, and your dopamine’s there when you’re talking to the salesperson. You feel good about that deal. You’re like, yes, this is the car. To your point, I feel good about the price. But then you walk into that scary F&I office and it feels oh my god I have to get ready for this. Why does that still feel like you’re gearing up for a fight when you go into that office?
JESS: Yeah, it’s a few things. Number one, it’s at the end of the process. So you already feel like you went through this process. You did your research online. Maybe you had this amazing experience with a salesperson in the dealership. You test drove the car. You felt like you could get your questions answered. But you also feel like you’ve already talked about a lot of this stuff. Maybe you’ve even pre-agreed to some of the price points and things like that, and then all of a sudden you’re back in this room, quite literally sitting across the desk from someone, and you’re feeling like all of a sudden you’re being sold again. And I think that’s one of the keys that if we can leverage the connected technology we have nowadays and data to make this whole process faster and more streamlined, it becomes a conversation. It doesn’t mean that you’re not having a great conversation with, in this case, maybe the F&I manager at a store in order to figure out what’s right to add on to your process. But I, you know, it’s not as easy as this, but if you make it feel like a conversation where the customer is getting educated on their options, and in this case, you know, the F&I person is actually explaining those options, then you don’t feel like you’re going into a hard sale when you’ve already spent all this time figuring things out and researching things. You feel like you’re going into a conversation and you’re learning more about what your options are for the car that you’re about to buy.
MATT: A quick question here, again from my standpoint, it is negotiation, right? There is a large spectrum of what that final price can be. And if I’m a dealer, I could say, well, you do want to put some pressure, and I think if I don’t do that, if it’s less pressure, does that mean less profit? So I’d love to say, is that true? Like if you don’t put pressure, you’re not going to have the same profit.
JESS: You know, look, the front end and back end profit in a dealership is all very important. And what we were talking about with the F&I office, I mean, these are important parts of how dealerships make money and they’re in business to make money. And I think, you know, if we could look at this super transparently and evenly, we as consumers, we get that too. We don’t expect them to lose money on the deal. The key here is fair, fair opportunity, fair deals. And so, I think it’s less about pressure and it’s more about finding the options that make sense for our customer.
We want to help dealers do good business and make profit on the vehicles they’re selling. But what comes with that profitability is kind of this concept of lifetime profitability. So by doing that, you want to do it the right way. You want to have a great relationship with your customer. You want to again make them feel like they got a fair deal leaving so that they come back to you next time, so that they come back for service, and that’s what’s really going to drive profitability for a dealership as a business.
And so, I think it’s less about pressure. When you put pressure on someone, you know, obviously they tense up, they back away. You’re putting more risk into the deal overall that they walk away feeling overwhelmed, feeling frustrated. That’s why I’d like to pivot the concept of putting pressure on what to buy into helping a customer figure out what’s right for them, and talking about a fair deal that is adding value to the deal itself. Like you walk away feeling confident and comfortable in what you did, and you know, excited about the purchase you just made, and not feeling like you were pressured into a decision that isn’t right for you.
MATT: So, Jess, what are some of these specifics that people can keep in mind when they’re doing this?
JESS: So, I think something specific, for whether it’s an F&I manager or even a salesperson who might be talking dollars and cents with a customer to think about is if you already know, which you should with the technology and the tools that we have now, if you already know that a customer’s maybe been penciling a deal online or running payment calculations that are like $400, $450 a month, maybe don’t show up kind of presenting them what they could get for $600, $650 a month. Start where that customer already is because if you jump them that far up you’re going to lose them from the beginning.
MATT: With the suite of tools that Cox Automotive has with AI, it’s a rising tide that can kind of carry all ships. So how does a dealer give every manager that same picture going in? Because right now it sounds like it could live in one person’s head. So how do they kind of give that information equality to everyone?
JESS: You want to do everything you can do to set them up for success. Ultimately they’re the ones that have to take the baton and run.
MATT: Got it.
JESS: In this case, what that looks like is giving them the tools they need, being able to give your staff technology and intelligence that they didn’t have yesterday, enables them to perform at the very best that they can. So all of a sudden, you know, your best sales folks, your best F&I folks, they’re performing even better. Your next rung down, they’re performing as good as those original ones were. You know, to your point, it rises all tides. It levels up everyone, everyone has access to these tools that can make them the very best, that can make them the most profitable, that can help them feel good about getting people into the right car.
These things don’t have to be at odds. You can feel really good about getting people into the car that’s right for them, and you know you can be really successful in your business. And so it’s less about, to your point, putting pressure on customers and selling in, maybe what used to be a traditional way, and it’s more about really getting people into the right cars and believing that if you meet the customer where they are and you do the right thing for them, you know the business will work its way through.
MATT: What I find fascinating and what I’m optimistic about is there’s more tools, there’s more technologies, but what that’s actually unlocking is the human side of it. And it sounds like you can’t be over reliant. Is that right? You can’t be too over reliant and just say I’m just going to follow whatever the tool says, whatever the technology says, right?
JESS: That is spot on, Matt. I mean, okay, your point of it unlocking the human side of it, that is spot on. I remember probably a decade ago now when we were first talking about digital retailing tools and what a big deal it was to have price transparency online so that consumers could understand what the prices were and kind of start to do some of the deal online. And when I would talk to a lot of dealers back then, they’re like, “But if I give all that information ahead of time, then how do I build the human-to-human interaction? How do I build the relationship? Car selling is a relationship business.”
And the truth of the matter is that’s the point of it. You can build the human relationship even earlier in the process. So if you give this information online, if you allow consumers to engage the way they want to, maybe start a text conversation with the dealership, you’re still a human being behind that text, and you’re starting the human-to-human interaction even earlier in the process. So you can actually build that rapport, that relationship, earlier and stronger by using technology to enable it.
MATT: I love that. That’s my anecdotal one. I once tried to go all digital in the process, and it felt empty. It felt good to try to get the best possible deal. But I remember actually being in the dealership, and talking to the salesperson who told me I didn’t know what size I needed. He asked about my kids and he had kids similar age. He’s like, “you’re gonna want the Jeep long.” He’s like, “trust me with the third row.” And there was that small thing that, to your point, I’m like, I’m willing to pay more money now because now I realize I do actually need that. That is so sterile when you just do it online and there’s just there’s no human in it.
JESS: That’s a great example. There was context in the decision. You could relate to this other human being. Like that’s human behavior. That is the psychology behind human behavior. And we talk a lot about you know what’s what makes a good salesperson and whatnot. At the end of the day, all of this is influence. Like yeah, that salesperson is trying to influence you to buy a car. Of course they are. That’s their job. But if they’re doing it the right way, they’re adding context and they’re adding a personal spin that helps you to even feel better about, okay, I need that extended version. And that makes sense. “You’ve got kids too. I get that. This is why it could make my life better, easier.”
THE FINAL WORD
MATT: All right, Jess, the final word is Deal Intelligence.
JESS: All right, knowing what a consumer can afford, which lender fits their needs, and which products make sense before the conversation starts. I think this is the future of what unlocks this amazingly powerful consumer experience for buying a car.
Deal intelligence is you know we have a couple of products at Cox Automotive that enable deal intelligence that pull all that data together to recommend the very best deal, to recommend the best lending options and the best terms and the best menu and F&I options to add on. All of that comes to drive profitability and success for a dealership, but also the very best deal for a consumer. And so, with intelligence, these things can actually meet in the middle and be a win-win solution for the buyer and the seller.
MATT: Well, Jess, another fantastic episode. It’s always a pleasure to be here with you and dare I say, maybe we can get you back for a third episode next season?
JESS: Hey, third time’s a charm. I’m in for it.
MATT: Awesome. All right, have a great day. It was great to see you.
JESS: Thanks, Matt.
