Matthew Lasher, Executive at West Herr Auto Group, has taken a highly disciplined approach to improving business amid the company’s flat new vehicle sales and the overall challenges in the used car market.
It’s a mode of operation that has long driven auto retail, which got lost during COVID-19, but remains key to staying competitive, said the automotive veteran.
“It requires a disciplined team, disciplined follow-up, disciplined engagement, disciplined merchandizing, disciplined sourcing, disciplined pricing, disciplined wholesale,” Lasher told Daily Dealer Live hosts, Sam D’Arc and Yossi Levi.
Big picture: That discipline also applies to West Herr’s approach to tech—most notably with Streamline Auto Solutions.
This fintech software solution was developed in-house by the group to solve affordability and deal structure problems.
Streamline started as a vehicle selection tool and a budget calculator to help salespeople guide vehicle selection and show customers vehicles that they could afford and get approved for.
It has evolved into a solution that unlocks the inefficiencies that exist between the store’s knowledge of underwriting programs, the lenders' programs, and how West Herr puts deals together.
“Any of us who's been a manager at a retail store has been presented a deal by a salesperson that's probably not a deal. The [loan-to-value ratio] LTV is 180% or maybe we forgot to include the negative equity of the trade. It happens,” said Lasher, who is the president of Streamline.
The data-heavy solution—which sits inside the auto group’s RouteOne and Dealertrack toolkits—also assesses factors like higher interest rates, higher bank fees, and other affordability variables that can make or break a deal.
“The majority of consumers have some budget challenges. Even if they're a tier one customer, you can be in the mid-700s but still be kind of tapped out. Your credit card debt is rising, household debt is rising, the available cash that you have is falling,” said Lasher.
Streamline Auto Solutions is currently processing 500K credit decisions a day with data from thousands of lenders. And West Herr Auto Group is hoping to be integrated with 11,000 dealerships by the end of the year.
Bottom line: “Our quest really is to be in every dealer in the country and provide some value towards this affordability problem,” said Lasher.
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