Do OEM programs really work, or are dealers actually paying more for less? In this episode of Dealer Confidential, host Ilana Shabtay chats with Matt Lasher, president of Streamline and former Director of Marketing at West Herr, about the real truth of OEM programs: how much do they really benefit dealerships and are the OEMs, vendors, and dealers even in sync with each other? Here's what one anonymous dealer had to say: Dear Ilana, As a marketing director, I find the OEM programs are increasingly limiting, and frankly, they're just not cutting it anymore. There are software solutions that I would like to implement but can't because they're not part of the OEM programs. Even the softwares that are in-program don't even properly integrate with my existing tech stack. Sincerely, A Frustrated Dealer Ilana and Matt dive into: Are OEM programs truly the best fit for the most innovative dealers. Is there really a one-size-fits-all solution for everyone. The knowledge and experience gap between OEMs and dealers. What are the unintended consequences of the OEM-vendor relationship. What does an effective tech stack for a dealer actually look like? Do OEMs share the same brand perception as dealers and customers? Resources mentioned: Ilana Shabtay Matt Lasher West Herr Auto Group Streamline Episode Transcript: Matt Lasher (00:00) I worked at an OEM. I worked at Nissan North America. They don't know how to sell a car. Like they don't, they don't really like they think maybe, you know, and so, so these OEMs put these programs together or guided by advisors or consultants of like, this is going to really move the needle. And often they don't, you know, that could be bad advice because they're not in the trenches. Ilana Shabtay (00:46) Hello, Ilana Shabtay here with Dealer Confidential, the podcast where we take anonymous hot takes and talk about them with expert guests. Today I have Matt Lasher. Matt, how are you doing? Matt Lasher (00:57) Ilana, I'm doing awesome. Thank you for having me. You know, I don't know, should I like block out my face here? So like you can't and like blur my voice a little. Ilana Shabtay (01:03) No! So we keep the hot take anonymous just to keep things simple. But if we had the ability to bring on anonymous guests, that would definitely be my next choice. But thank you for opening up the podcast with really who you are. I love it. I've known you for years now. We actually met on a previous podcast, which is awesome. I built a relationship from that. Matt's the former Director of Marketing at West Herr although always connected to the business through family. So it's always really nice to have you on. West Herr is a 40 store group in Buffalo, New York with over 20 OEMs. That's going to become relevant when we talk about the hot take. And now he's president of Streamline, which is a fintech startup that came up actually out of West Herr, which is awesome. We love a good startup that's actually connected really, really strongly to the business and helping bring solutions based on the retail side and the challenges that you faced. Tell us a little bit about that, and then I'll talk about the hot take for today's talk. Matt Lasher (01:58) Yeah, listen, Streamline was just born out of a unique problem that West Herr felt, which was how do we find customers cars that they can afford and most importantly get approved on? And, you know, so we kept applying pressure. This was like back in '16 or '17, turned into a SaaS product. Everybody at the group used, we started sharing it with dealers outside of the group. And then we started connecting to lenders. So very organic experience. And then the opportunity got so big that I had to like pick a path between marketing, running the marketing team, which we had built at West Herr, it's about 10 people strong, and this other thing. So I'm a glutton for punishment. So I picked the other thing and now I feel resource constrained and all sorts of good things about startup land. But I love it. The topic we're going to talk about, I'm excited about it. It's something I spent 15 years in. So I think this is something that I'm happy to chime in. Ilana Shabtay (02:43) Yeah, and when I read it, you were the first person or one of the first people to come to mind. So here we got an anonymous hot take. It was given at NADA this past year in New Orleans, where the dealer from the South basically said it's a marketing director that said OEM programs are limiting and they're getting a bit tired of them. There are softwares that they want to work with that they can't because they're not in program. And the softwares that are in program aren't properly even integrating with their like with their existing tech stack. So how do we make this better? What's some advice? Again, especially someone who was coming managing 20 programs, how can we help out this dealer who's obviously frustrated? Matt Lasher (03:21) There's lots of really like evident examples of this. I can go way back 10 years ago or so when Stellantis introduced a shift digital recommended digital marketing program. West Herr had been doing digital marketing paid search for itself for, you know, five, 10 years prior. Right. And we were doing just fine. And what we saw was click inflation and more costs and less effectiveness and basically a rising up of the bottom dealers to some average. But it like punished the innovative dealers that were sort of like up here and already doing something. And so we see this with websites, right? You want, you have to use a variety of websites. West Herr has over 20 OEMs that we work with. If you go through all of those required programs, there's only about three website companies that you can use if you wanted to use one vendor, right? A lot of dealer groups aren't structured like West Herr, very dense, located altogether. Most dealer groups the size of West Herr are all over the country. Ilana Shabtay (04:07) Right. Matt Lasher (04:15) So they don't always necessarily care about the same tools, you know, within the whole group. But some of that's just out of like survival. Cause you cannot actually get all these tools to work together. You know, one, one story I think worth sharing just about like OEM programs. I'll share about Ford. Ford many years ago introduced auto alert as a preferred life cycle marketing tool for Ford dealers and Ilana Shabtay (04:26) Right. Matt Lasher (04:40) it was to do like targeted incentives for people and they say hey get on the program. West Herr was like hey great news. We already use Auto Alert right? So we had to enroll in the Ford version of the program. Okay, so we had already Been paying what we'd been paying we enroll in the Ford program. That's now subvented and negotiated by Ford and it was more money. So I got Ilana Shabtay (04:52) Right. But does that matter to the dealership if it's co-operable? Yes. Matt Lasher (05:06) Well, I mean, it's all cost and stuff like it just seemed silly though that like, you know that that was Ilana Shabtay (05:10) What? No, you're absolutely right. I'm just wondering at the bottom line, does the dealer, does and should the dealer actually care if they're getting the money back? I don't know. I'm not sure. Matt Lasher (05:19) Well, I just look at it as a cost is cost. You know what mean? Nothing in life is free. So the dealer's paying for it and the cost of the car or our contributions to co-op or whatever. it's an example of like sometimes. But I think so this individual dealer that sent you the hot take, I think needs to also, you know, try to deploy some empathy towards the OEM that's trying to manage a dealer network of, you know, Ilana Shabtay (05:21) Yeah, right. Right, I know what you mean. That's we go from our house. Yep. Yep. Matt Lasher (05:43) 2000 dealers or however many because because it comes in all shapes and sizes. As you know, Ilana we work with all these different dealers. There's no exact like one size fits all. And I think ultimately some dealers are good. Some dealers need a little bit of help. Right. And I think the OEM is trying to figure out like, how do we provide guidance, structure, innovation and move the ball forward? The OEMs though, conversely also need to deploy empathy about what they don't know about the dealer process. Like many people that I interact with on the other side of the fence now, I'm a vendor now, right? So like I put my vendor hat on or I interact with maybe lenders or OEMs. I worked at an OEM. I worked at Nissan North America. They don't know how to sell a car. Like they don't, they don't really like they think maybe, you know, and so, so these OEMs put these programs together or guided by advisors or consultants of like, this is going to really move the needle. And often they don't, you know, that could be bad advice because they're not in the trenches. Like maybe this dealer that wrote in is talking about, cause they feel it very deeply. When you're on the front line of this interaction with a customer or customers every day and the pressure you feel to have your business make money and move along. You want to be innovative. You want to work with you know, the Fullpaths of the world or the Auto Geniuses of the world or whatever you like as an, as an entrepreneur, you want to do that. And then you feel constrained by the OEM where I always balanced this in my mind as a dealer group was look, we don't build the Chevy product or the Ford product or the Subaru product or the Toyota product. So we have to be respectful of that fact. And it's a privilege and an honor to be able to sell that stuff like through a franchised monopoly system. So you do have to play the rule, play the game the w
