#42 Building an app store for 16,000 dealers, Pitfalls of direct-to-consumer, Dawn of the A.I. salesperson? | Phil Oriani, CEO at Shift Digital

In this episode, I'm speaking with Phil Oriani, CEO of Shift Digital. This episode is brought to you by: Cars Commerce - The platform to simplify everything about buying and selling cars. To learn how you can measure and improve your team’s follow-up performance, visit carscommerce.inc/experience AutoFi - AutoFi empowers your team with digital retail technology that accelerates the sale. Learn more @ https://www.autofi.com/cdg/ Interested in advertising with CarDealershipGuy? Drop us a line here Interested in being considered as a guest on the podcast? Add your name here Topics: (00:00:00) - Intro (00:02:41) - Phil’s career journey with Shift Digital and Ford Direct  (00:17:10) - How does tier 1, 2, and 3 advertising work for cars? (00:20:44) - Do traditional OEM commercials work? (00:23:19) - What tier 3 marketing have you seen work recently from dealers? (00:26:50) - Do dealers have the technology to compete with Carvana? (00:28:39) - What do you think about the trend of the leading automotive software providers consolidating under one umbrella? (00:32:44) - Who is your customer and how do you make money? (00:35:21) - What is the risk with DTC model? (00:39:43) - Harnessing the power of organic social media (00:44:36) - What does the world look like if Shift didn’t exist? (00:46:31) - Are you seeing anything in AI work to change the dealership experience? (00:50:22) - How do you see the technological landscape changing for dealerships over the next 5 years? (00:52:04) - How do you see Shift Digital evolving? Check out Shift Digital here. Check out the website for more (https://dealershipguy.com) and follow me on X @GuyDealership! (https://x.com/guydealership) This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions.