Episode
Meet The Secret Agent Running This Dealer's Operations | Industry Spotlight
- Podcast
- Car Dealership Guy Podcast
- Published
- Aug 22, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 2267
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Summary
In this episode of the Industry Spotlight, joining host Sam D'Arc are John Keohane, VP of Operations and Partner at Temecula Valley Buick GMC, and Liam Golightly, SVP of Customer Success at Podium to discuss how AI operator agents are giving dealership leaders a way to run their entire operation without being in every conversation themselves. John built his own AI agent, which he nicknamed Emily, to scrape telematics data, run weekly revival campaigns on stale leads, and even coach his sales team by timing how fast they respond before Emily steps in. The results are hard to ignore: Emily replaced his old bulk texting tool, helped uncover a customer-pay revenue drop in six seconds instead of weeks, and pushed his service department's customer-pay repair orders up 12 to 13 percent this year. For a single-point dealer competing against much larger groups, John says the technology has become a genuine equalizer. This episode of the Car Dealership Guy Podcast is brought to you by Podium. Topics: 04:15 CPA Brain Overwhelmed By Reports. 06:10 Low-Hanging Tech Is Ripe. 07:25 Telematics Data Was Untouched. 09:25 Cold BDC Texts Feel Impersonal. 10:45 Operator Is AI For GMs. 13:00 Emily Texts Revival Campaigns Daily. 14:25 AI Revives Dead Leads Warmly. 16:15 Emily Surfaces Near-Miss Sales. 18:45 Salespeople Race To Beat Emily. 19:55 Employees Use AI To Beat AI. 23:30 Podium Sieves All Outreach. 33:50 AI Levels The Playing Field. Podium - the AI platform trusted by one in three dealerships. Podium helps dealers consolidate sales, service, messaging, and voice into one connected system that actually runs the work. If your AI isn’t driving real outcomes, it’s time to take a closer look @ here. Check out Car Dealership Guy’s stuff: For dealers: CDG Circles ➤ htt…