Brian Pasch: An Open Letter To Ford's CEO
Brian Pasch is the founder of PCG Companies, which is comprised of Brian Pasch Enterprises, PCG Digital, Localiente, and PCG Research. He's an author, keynote speaker, marketing contrarian, and a beacon of light within the retail auto industry as someone who has always been an advocate for the dealer body.
Recently Brian penned an open letter to Mr. Farley, the CEO of Ford, in which he asks very thought-provoking questions aimed at clarifying Mr. Farley's curious comments about the future of Ford's dealership network.
In addition, Brian shares about a new GA4 (Google Analytics 4) Standards Council in which he aims to standardize how reporting takes place throughout the industry and across all vendors.
"I think that GM and Ford dealers have been relatively quiet about some of the bombshells. Both manufacturers have announced that their EV models will sell directly to consumers on a national portal. It appears that Tekion will power both of those solutions. There is no detail on how trades will be handled, and no details about F&I products."
13:40 - Jim Farley (Ford's CEO) was probably the most transparent in sharing that D2C is an efficient model and that they want to be more like Tesla — they want the margins and want customers to be happy. Brian shares that he understands also the business case for such a model. Jim's job is to keep investors happy.
14:15 - Brian shares that he was on a panel discussion with Brian Benstock, highlighting the dealership operator as someone who is focused on providing the best customer experience possible. Brian Benstock has developed a process with his team in which customers can take delivery of a vehicle and experience the entire transaction in 45 minutes.
18:00 - Brian explains that one of the reasons he is an advocate for dealers is because our industry contains some of the most impressive entrepreneurs who've reinvented themselves many times over. The vast majority of dealers are working hard to embrace what's coming next.
27.27 - Discussion about Brian's formation of the Google Analytics Standards Council and what it aims to accomplish throughout the retail automobile industry. The goal is to create a standard way of reporting events industry-wide so that no matter the vendor, everyone has an agreed-upon way to report the data. Doing so, Brian believes will save a lot of confusion and save a lot of time when it comes to trying to understand the dealership's data. FlexDealer, Michael's automotive software and marketing agency, is proud to be a founding member of the council and will help create the standards by which website and marketing vendors track inside of GA4.
Listen to the full episode for even more insights and context from Brian Pasch!
Like this show? Please leave us a review here — even one sentence helps! Consider including your LinkedIn or Instagram handle so we can thank you personally!
Thanks, Brian Pasch!
If you enjoyed this episode featuring Brian Pasch, support us by clicking the links!
Connect with Michael on LinkedIn
More Dealers Are Choosing To Partner with FlexDealer
Looking for a reliable, high-performance dealership marketing partner? Visit https://www.flexdealer.com to discover why more and more dealers are choosing them over big-box providers.