Building Bridges: How Strategic Partnerships Are Reshaping Automotive Retail with Pam Patton

In this episode, special guest host Jamye Carpenter joins the Mile Marker Podcast for a dynamic conversation with Pam Patton, Vice President of Strategic Partnerships at ACV. Pam shares her journey from starting in rental car photography to leading strategic growth initiatives at one of the automotive industry's most innovative companies. Recorded live at the CAR Conference in San Diego, the episode dives into the surprising shift in how companies approach collaboration, the growing openness to partnerships, and the role of AI and technology in shaping the future of auctions, inspections, and dealer service. From workforce challenges to dealer consolidation and even chatbots tailored to customer demographics, this episode is packed with insights on where the industry is headed—and how leaders like Pam are helping to shape it.

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Transcript

Angela Simoes:

Go here. She's going to clap. And here and then welcome everyone to the Mile Marker Podcast. My name is Angela Simons, your host, and I am here with a special guest, Jamie Carpenter, not a special guest. Guest. A co-host.

Jamye Carpenter:

Right. It's been so fun.

Angela Simoes:

So Jamie is the VP of Customer Success for Privacy for Cars. And today's guest is Pam Patton, who is Vice President of Strategic Partnerships with ACV. Welcome, Pam.

Pam Patton:

Thank you for having me.

Angela Simoes:

Thanks for joining us. So give our listeners a little bit of your background and then also what does ACV do?

Pam Patton:

So two things. Background, 28 years in automotive, which is crazy. So now I'm dating myself. Of course. We right now are in a situation where from the beginning of time, which was Alamo Rental car, who knew that I was going to start an automotive back in the nineties. I never knew this would be my career, but that's how it started, if you will. And I went over to retail photography, worked for Dominion for nine years, also worked at Cox and did Auditor Magazine. So a lot of photography and video connections. Never knowing all this would come to bring me to ACV. So I've been with ACV since originally 2016, but officially came on board in 2018.

Angela Simoes:

Okay. And I understand you've had multiple roles within ACV and that the strategic partnerships is something that's new.

Pam Patton:

Correct? Correct. So Territory Manager did that for about six months running Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And then I went into being a regional director over Ohio Valley. Then I went into being the vice president of sales, handling the center part of the country from North Dakota down to New Orleans, 400 employees at the highest level, which was a lot. And the latest position is now Vice President of Strategic Partnerships. Would you like to share with Angela how we met? So we both won the Women in the Marketing award.

Jamye Carpenter:

Congratulations to you. Both

Pam Patton:

Years ago. Yes.

Jamye Carpenter:

And we became besties.

Pam Patton:

We did. We did. And now in the new role, there's going to be some great partnerships that we can do together. So it's exciting to see where we're headed.

Angela Simoes:

And before we started recording, we were chatting and you were saying that just being here at the car conference, so we're here at Carr in San Diego that it's very clear that partnerships is something that companies are looking for and maybe there's some non-traditional partnerships that people would never think about. So talk a little bit about that and what kind of partnerships are out there. So let me rephrase that. So talk a little bit about the different conversations you're having with people, what kind of partnerships people are looking for, what has been the most surprising to

Pam Patton:

You? So it's interesting because to be honest with you, I really thought that things would be a very specific way. Again, nobody was in this role prior till, so I'm building this out,

Angela Simoes:

But it seemed pretty straightforward. Partnerships, right?

Pam Patton:

Partnerships, figure it out, Pam, you're going to be great. So just run with it, which is what we do at ACV. But the good news is it's been really, really rewarding to not only be here at the car conference, but other places even in the past, just in over the last eight months of just starting to build things that we really didn't have anybody connecting the dots. We're all in the automotive space building different things, but to start working on things together so that we can a lift each other up, whatever those partnerships may be. Or again, we're solving problems for dealers that maybe this company only handles this one little thing and this company handles the other half of that. So can we bridge that together, bring it together, and anything's better for the dealers. And so that's the part that's really exciting.

Jamye Carpenter:

I didn't think about this until we were talking beforehand too about some of the people who have approached you. So is it weird going from people avoiding you to people seeking you out? Now?

Pam Patton:

It's funny you say this because I just had a meeting with a very large company, which I will leave nameless, and no one would ever thought that we would've sat for over an hour talking about how we're going to work together right now. And it's just, again, things that we can do to make things better for our dealer partners. And so right now that's my focus. New revenue opportunities for the company, but then also figuring out how we can kind of work together and help those problems get solved faster.

Angela Simoes:

I'm curious, what do you attribute that to that made them more open to sitting down with you? Is it a, listen, we tried it on our own, it didn't work, so now we need your help. Or it's a, listen, we really want to do this, but we don't have the expertise in this space. So I'm just curious what that is. Some stuff that's happened on the OEM side from a manufacturing standpoint about a lot of OEMs tried to invest in their own autonomous driving systems or their own software defined vehicle systems. And sorry to say, none of 'em really did it that well, right? And so now they're having to realize, okay, we'll divest in our own and we'll go buy a third party system. And that's happening a lot. So I'm having that same kind of thought process. I'm wondering if that's what's driving this now, openness to

Pam Patton:

Partnerships think, I think it's a couple of things. One is the relationship building that I've done in the past. I'm pretty vocal on LinkedIn and Facebook. I really don't venture

Angela Simoes:

Kill 'em with kindness, Pam, kill 'em with kindness.

Pam Patton:

I bet you're too far out from either of those. But a lot of the meetings I've had just in the last two days, those were all people that reached out and said, Hey, we know that you're there. We want to figure out how to work with ACV. We just didn't know who to call.

Speaker 4:

And

Pam Patton:

So I'm bridging that gap. It could be transport, it could be commercial, it could just be auctions, it could be our physical remarketing centers. So it's all of these different buckets, but they all, at the end of the day, it's the dealer. That's the common denominator. So it's just kind of getting all of that together

Angela Simoes:

And serving the dealer better.

Pam Patton:

Exactly.

Angela Simoes:

And can you give a couple of examples of what that means?

Pam Patton:

I think number one, it's retention. It's having the best customer that wants to come back every single time.

Angela Simoes:

So keeping the dealer as a customer,

Pam Patton:

Absolutely.

Angela Simoes:

Got it.

Pam Patton:

Absolutely. But again, it's who are they trusting? Who is that person that they can call at eight o'clock at night, who's going to take the phone call?

So it's being there for all the right reasons, but knowing that you're building something bigger than what you can actually even put into words. And I think our industry right now is it's in a space where there's a lot of change. There's a lot of questions on how things are going to head even in the next six months. And I think we just need to be mindful of, take a deep breath, we're going to get through it. We've gotten through a lot of worse things, but enjoy the ride because that's why we love our industry so much. It's always evolving and changing.

Angela Simoes:

This could be a contentious question, so if you don't want to answer it, oh boy, fine. Do you think some of this will lead to consolidation?

Pam Patton:

I think for sure. So yeah, there's a project I'm working on right now in that space, and I think as a industry, we're going to start seeing a lot of smaller dealers decide to go a different way. You're going to also see some dealers that, hey, they want to retire, and the children do not want to take over that third generation group. And so you're going to auctions, right?

Jamye Carpenter:

Absolutely. Yeah. I think we are seeing that now. You guys have, what, 10 auctions? We have 10

Pam Patton:

Across the US right

Jamye Carpenter:

Now, plus Ireland. They started out as just an online auction, and then now they've gotten into the physical auction space, which of course is going to help with a marshaling yard of sorts, right? Hundred percent a place to recondition vehicles, store them, et cetera. So I think that that has been something that's really shocked the industry is that ACV said we'll never buy, and then

Pam Patton:

Digital only. That's how we started.

Jamye Carpenter:

So

Pam Patton:

It is evolving to that space

Jamye Carpenter:

And

Pam Patton:

It will help us for all those commercial consignors that we would never have been able to talk to in the past. So now is the time we can actually start making some changes in that space for the good and be a part of the space.

Angela Simoes:

So the topic of workforce has come up in a few episodes here. How does that factor into maybe also driving the desire to partner? Is it maybe they don't have the capacity and so they're looking because they can't hire or maybe they don't have the budget to hire or I don't know, but what are you seeing in that?

Pam Patton:

I think when it comes to recruiting and hiring, especially in today's day and age, and I feel like since Covid things have completely changed, not everybody wants to work as hard as we all maybe did before Covid. So it is a struggle to find really great talent. And it's funny, I remember when I moved into being the VP on the sales side, and I remember our CEO, George Simone saying, Pam, you're going to be recruiting 30% of the time.

Angela Simoes:

Wow,

Pam Patton:

No, I'm not. That's not going to be a thing. Why would I be working that in that space? The funny part is I was, you're recruiting every day. You're perfecting that interview and the skills to that. You may not say all the questions the same exact way, but it's the same 10 things you're going to ask everybody

Speaker 4:

And

Pam Patton:

After those 10 questions as it's somebody that will make it and be a part of what you're building out or not. So I think today you've got a lot of look at the restaurant industry right now. I mean, you can go to any city and there is a need for people to be working in that space. So I think we're mechanics. It's the same thing. I think we're all industries right now. No matter what it is, there's always going to be some type of an issue right now. So we've got to figure that out. And I think just really not rushing through that process. I always used to tell my team, make recruiting a process. Don't make it an event because when you make it an event, you have nobody in that pool of who you can cherry pick and bring on. You're starting from scratch and that really can hurt your business in the long run.

Angela Simoes:

Are there specific groupings of positions that you're seeing have the greatest need?

Pam Patton:

I think probably right now, I mean, again, we are always looking for inspectors that actually do the condition reports. I am hearing from the dealers right now, they're always looking for new talent, whether it's mechanics, people that are going to be in that service advisory role, body

Jamye Carpenter:

Shops,

Pam Patton:

All of it. The tech colleges and schools right now do not have enough people. So I know some of the dealers have done some really good partnering with the tech schools so that they get first choice of who.

Angela Simoes:

Wow. So they rarely aren't even cranking out enough students out of the tech vocational schools to fill the positions.

Jamye Carpenter:

That's correct. And AAA did the same thing. It's like, you can come on here and we will help support you and make sure you have a job when you finish these things. And yeah, I think that that's been a real struggle.

Speaker 4:

It has.

Jamye Carpenter:

But do you not think that that has more to do with just blue collar jobs in general? Going away? You have more people graduating from college than you ever did before getting their masters, and so we just aren't tell you, my kids, we tried to get them to take a gap year after they graduated, go do something, find no, I have to go to college. Their teachers have pushed them that you have to do this. And so a lot of people say it's people who don't want to work, but I just feel like that space in general is just narrower.

Pam Patton:

Right. I agree with that. And I think even thinking of new industries, my daughter's boyfriend is going for cybersecurity and graduating in May, and I'm thinking it doesn't even matter if you're in automotive, you're in any other sector's going to need it.

Angela Simoes:

Everybody's going to

Pam Patton:

Need it. Pilots, all the pilots are all retiring. There is a need for that. Children need a really good eye doctor by the age of 13 because of the iPhones and the screens. And there's another job that we probably should have thought about, maybe my other children will consider. But yeah, there's needs for certain things that are very interesting that you didn't think about before.

Angela Simoes:

Yeah. Let's talk about technology. We have a few minutes left. So let's talk about your perspective on how that has affected things the last couple of years. And then also as you're recruiting, as you're forming these new partnerships, what's the technology conversation in those conversations as you're talking to those people?

Pam Patton:

I think, I mean, technology is always going to be evolving. I think that for ACV, we were technology first, automotive second. We have a lot of brilliant people, whether it's Dr. Coles, Dr. Phil, we have an office in India that's just all engineers. Same thing in Toronto. We've got our office in Paris, another set of very brilliant people that are building some great things for us. Stuff that we'll talk about next year for sure, when I can actually talk about that. But

I think one thing we've done really great is we've invested even the technology in our employees. So for instance, our team, when our inspectors go and they actually go and look at a vehicle, there is software that will pop up on their phone to say, Hey, we know that such and such a vehicle between this year and this year. We know that that has a transmission issue. Do another check. Listen, check things out, do another walk around and make sure that you've checked all of your things. So we're able to give almost some of that back. Could this be something we give out to service advisors down the road? It could be. We will see where the journey of ACV takes that technology, but we have the data to be able to look at that because we've kept everything for the last nine

Jamye Carpenter:

Years. And John brought that up in our session that we did on AI and how to reduce arbitrations, correct. And how AI is a component of that. And we know that this may model in year has this particular problem. Correct. So I'm going to tell you over and over until you have checked the box that you did not only did a cold start, but you did it where things were quiet because you could have a screaming child in the room that's going to pick up. That's the transmission. So there are just different things that you have to work through. But I thought that was very interesting that AI is used to really pinpoint what those pain points are to say, Hey, if you want to better condition report writings, then these are the steps that you need to follow.

Pam Patton:

Yeah. I think it's not only that, but there's so many things even in transport, the transportation side of our industry, connecting the right jobs to the right carriers,

It's all technology. We're not going to send somebody with a two car hauler and they have to pick up 18 vehicles. It's not going to work out. That's not a great experience. So each part of these buckets of different parts that are connecting us all together, the AI is going to change it. I mean, look at chat GBT, which is right now changing. I mean, if you were a student back in the day, this could have helped save me on a couple papers I had to write. So there's some things there. You look at LinkedIn, you can literally write what you want and hit the button and it can help you.

Speaker 4:

So

Pam Patton:

There's things that are great. Yes, they can make sure that you're set up for success. So some people love it, some people don't. I think we just have to find a happy medium.

Angela Simoes:

We were six degrees of separation in my thought process here. We were actually having this conversation at dinner last night, and I was saying that I don't think that today's generations that are using Chachi PT to write the papers

Really appreciate that help. I agree as much as we do, because we had to write the papers manually. We had to do all the research and take our notes, and we had to do it the old fashioned way. And now when I'm even just to generate a first draft of something is so much faster because it's easier to edit something than to create from scratch. 

Pam Patton:

Here's what I will say. Look at even just the different types of groupings of individuals. You've got your 22-year-old that lives in downtown, Metro City, whatever. The way the dealers are going to communicate with that particular customer is different than the 50-year-old mother that needs to get the minivan and needs. You've got to figure out how to communicate with the audience. And that's been a struggle for the dealers for the last 10 years for sure.

Jamye Carpenter:

Oh, that's interesting. I hate a chat bot when I am looking at cars because it is just pushing out the same information to everybody. So I've never thought about that.

Angela Simoes:

That's actually a really good point. Yes,

Pam Patton:

I am going back many years, but I think it was 2010, and I remember being at a conference for one company and we had some people speaking, and it was dealers need to learn how to communicate with the customer the way that they communicated and reached out to them. So you've got to, a lot of the dealers back in 2010, were not managing their chats on their websites. And what they were saying is it's just like you have a receptionist that sits in the front of the showroom. You need somebody that manages that chat. So if I'm questioning, Hey, I'm looking at the 2010 Ford Focus, somebody's going to respond to me, otherwise I'm off to the next place. But a lot of the dealers back then, were not getting that. And so now the technology just continues. They've got to catch up with how to communicate, and the different groups is going to make it even worse because some groups don't want to come to the

Jamye Carpenter:

Store.

Pam Patton:

They just want to have my card delivered to me and my loft,

Jamye Carpenter:

And

Pam Patton:

I'm going to do it all over the phone, or I'm going to do it online.

Jamye Carpenter:

However, Kristen von Bush with Experian Automotive did a presentation on this, and she did it by boomers, gen X, gen Z. That's exactly it. And broke it down. And to show the different buying patterns and different things. So the data's out there. So it would be, I mean, I love this Pam a lot. Does it exist today or are you saying you think that it's coming?

Pam Patton:

No, no, no. It definitely exists because this is things that we talked about in a conference 15 years ago. I'm saying that the dealers today, as

Jamye Carpenter:

We continue, well, just with the chat bot being able to recognize how to respond,

Angela Simoes:

The demographic of whatever they're talking to, whoever they're talking to,

Jamye Carpenter:

I don't

Pam Patton:

Know if that's out yet. If it's not, somebody should start then

Jamye Carpenter:

That I'm telling you that's real. We may

Pam Patton:

Have just

Jamye Carpenter:

Come up with something new. I mean, we've got an all women's band from the Grow group, and now we have a new product. Absolutely. It's great. We got to keep it going. Yeah.

Angela Simoes:

Yeah. Because it would make a big difference. But then, okay, I'm going to go back to the privacy thing because if I'm on a chatbot and they start referencing things that are very personal to me, that might be a little weird.

Jamye Carpenter:

But not if you said you're searching for a minivan within this price range that's going to be able to tell you basically, based on these factors, it's more likely that this person falls into this category, and so we're going to respond that way.

Angela Simoes:

Okay.

Jamye Carpenter:

That's I'm,

Angela Simoes:

That's a little more, because if they said, oh, this is to take your daughter to soccer, I'd be like, how do you know that?

Jamye Carpenter:

Yes,

Pam Patton:

Exactly.

Angela Simoes:

That would be kind of creepy

Pam Patton:

Between ai, machine learning and all of that. If it keeps getting smarter, you would start putting these people in buckets based off their buying habits.

Jamye Carpenter:

For sure. Exactly.

Pam Patton:

So I've been very good, by the way of when you go on a website, do not accept the cookies. If you don't know, that

Jamye Carpenter:

Should stop. I never accept. Yeah,

Pam Patton:

Yeah. Because that's giving now the rights to all your information, so there's things you have to educate yourself on in that space too.

Angela Simoes:

Yeah. Now my mind is like, that's actually a really brilliant, the whole demographic to chatbot thing. Well, this has been really exciting. I know we're at our time. We probably sit here for another half an hour and chat, but

Pam Patton:

Well, thanks

Angela Simoes:

For having me. No, thank you for joining us. Good luck with the partnerships. It sounds like it's going to be exciting. And there could be,

Jamye Carpenter:

Might be another episode here.

Angela Simoes:

There might be. Yes. I mean, it could be the makings for a really good industry specific reality show.

Pam Patton:

Yeah,

Angela Simoes:

Right.

Pam Patton:

Listen,

Angela Simoes:

That could be fun.

Pam Patton:

Jamie and I have a lot of things we could be talking about in that episode for sure.

Angela Simoes:

But thank you so much. Congratulations on the new role.

Pam Patton:

Thank you.

Angela Simoes:

Appreciate it. And we hope to have you back.

Pam Patton:

Well, thanks. I'll see you both at the rest of the conference.

Angela Simoes:

Thank you.