Fay Myers began his powersports dealership legacy in 1948, turning his enthusiasm from a hobby into a thriving business. Laying the foundation for Fay Myers Motorcycle World in Denver, CO, Myers traded in his own 1912 Harley-Davidson to purchase the sign for the shop and became one of Colorado’s first motorcycle dealerships. They would eventually be named the 99th Honda dealership in 1960 and finally the No. 1 Honda dealership in North America for motorcycle sales in 2000.
“We bought that 1912 motorcycle back years ago,” said General Manager Jason White. “But in January 2002, we lost everything in a catastrophic fire. The 1912 Harley-Davidson sat in the corner window and was fried. We spent about seven years restoring that bike. It’s on display in our showroom now.”
That Harley and the dealership have seen their share of disasters, as a year after the fire, the roof collapsed from a snow storm, but no matter what the challenge the team at Fay Myers faced, they overcame them beyond expectation.
“After the fire, we moved, relocated, got up and running and everything was going great, then the roof collapsed. We set up a circus tent outside in the parking lot to sell vehicles since the building was condemned,” White explained. “After the fire, we were severely under insured, so surviving it was a tough one. We were lucky that we had a cash reserve set up, as we were preparing to expand at the time. But when our roof collapsed, we were over insured. We bought every inch possible. We learned a lot of lessons about the things you don’t normally pay attention to over the years, now you have to pay attention.”
After taking over management of the business in 1975, Myers’ son, Gary, decided to sell the business in 2005. Several employees, including White, wanted to continue the family’s legacy and remained at the dealership when it was purchased by Schomp Automotive Group.
With new owners, the direction of the dealership refocused its vision and core values.
“Motorcycling is a family-passion business,” White said. “We want to be really good at what we do and give the best experience possible.”
In an effort to redesign the customer experience, Fay Myers focused on their staff.
“From sales to management, we train every single brand we have, and we are committed to doing it,” White said. “In our service department, we started sending four to six employees three to four times a year to factory training. At one point, we had the most Ducati factory-trained master technicians in the country. We had two or three Red Level technicians for Honda. As we continued to invest in people, our reputation grew and it helped stabilize our long-term goals.”
With a history of automotive dealerships, Schomp, Myers and his son celebrated the grand re-opening of Fay Myers Motorcycle World. Then, the Automotive Group took steps to update the dealership’s technology to meet the demand.
“Bike businesses typically are five, 10, 15 years behind the car business; how things transact, how information comes down the pipe,” White explained. “Schomp Automotive Group learned to allow the people who understand it to run it the way it needs to be run. Their support and leadership allowed us to really blossom. The Schomp family is very forward thinking, trying to make the customer experience better everywhere they go.”
Enter PSXDigital: an A.I.-powered customer experience management platform for powersports dealerships, focusing on CRM, inventory, marketing automation and websites.
“Investing in technology is a must,” White said. “My staff has pushed constantly to embrace change. We chose PSX because the functionality was light-years ahead of anything in the bike business.”
White said that since the customer isn’t visiting multiple dealerships before making a purchase as they would have years ago, they’re instead using their smartphones to do the research for them, and their first impression is online.
“The website we had was old and dated like a can of tuna; everyone has it, everyone looks at it though,” White said. “Google was introducing new searching mechanisms for measurement and we knew we needed to make the transition. We are interested in being on the cutting edge of the customer experience, we’re not interested in being a dying dinosaur.”
PSXDigital bridged the gap for Fay Myers Motorcycle World and has allowed them to make moves in order to stand out from the competition. Some of the features that PSXDigital offers within their integrated platform include inventory management, digital marketing, marketing automation, lead management, training, vehicle acquisition, sales process, website and CRM management.
“PSX can track appointment-to-call ratios, inbound phone leads, show ratio, if you have a good process to get those people into the store, what follow-up calls look like, how many inbound inquiries do we have on our website and then how many of those closed and what that experience was like,” White said. “At the click of a button, I can look at a lot of different data that is very helpful.”
One of White’s favorite aspects of PSXDigital is the ability to communicate with its founder, Larry Bruce.
“Larry knows what should work and what doesn’t work,” White said. “I tell him what doesn’t work and he explains why he did it, and we talk about it. He’s smart and the team is open when someone brings a factual-based challenge; they listen. Part of being an early adopter is understanding that it is not perfect, but we gain knowledge while doing it and push it to make it better.”
Through the use of A.I.-based technology, Fay Myers Motorcycle World is able to dust off the ashes and shine.
“Our vision is ‘to be loved by everyone except the competition.’ We don’t target our competition to dislike us, we want to be so good that they don’t like us, and that’s a guiding light as to who we are.”
Link: PSXDigital
