Rusnak Audi: Old-School Service With A New-School Approach
How GM Andrew Arizmendi is using relationship-building to increase profits and create a modern dealership experience.
THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. — Tucked away among rolling hills just a half-hour commute from car-happy Los Angeles, Rusnak Audi is sitting on the kind of literal and figurative real estate any dealership would envy.
Not only is it the cornerstone of a popular auto mall on a high-end suburban stretch, but it happens to sit smack in the middle of the eighth-richest city in the United States — with the surrounding area laying claim to the likes of Britney Spears and Will Smith.
Oh yeah, and everyone here has to have a car.
While that may sound like an impossible-to-ruin recipe for success, General Manager Andrew Arizmendi Sr. said the city’s affluent nature — and its wealth of discerning customers — require a slightly more involved approach.
“When I got here, I started playing my sales team an audio book on the Ritz-Carlton and the ‘Ritz-Carlton Way’,” Arizmendi said. “Something I have everyone here focus on is ‘Number one, you’ve got to have a very cheerful and a warm welcome.’”
But Arizmendi said that’s just the beginning of a sales process that has him regularly talking to customers, skipping the typical sales gimmicks — and remembering a lot of names along the way.
“All my metrics from the past two years show us that [Rusnak’s] number one positive is that we mention the customer’s name,” he said.
Arizmendi admits that his high-touch customer philosophy is rooted in his previous life at Rolls Royce and Bentley Motor Cars in Pasadena, Calif. But his approach is decidedly current. His tech-savvy sales team is required to demonstrate a genuine love for the ins and outs of Audi’s vehicles so they can best help Rusnak’s customers — not unlike the Genius Bar crew at an Apple Store.
“You know high-quality service will cost you money,” said Arizmendi. “But delivering and giving that experience you can’t have anywhere else will, over time, give you that loyalty that’s very, very hard to obtain.”
Arizmendi knows of what he speaks. While OEMs retain a brand loyalty of around 60 percent, dealerships generally only keep one in four customers over the long haul. Added to the difficulty of dealerships trying to maintain dedicated customers is the reality that auto sales across the U.S. are beginning to level off following years of growth.
Arizmendi said part of his solution in addressing the squeeze that dealers like him are facing is to focus heavily on millennial and Gen Z customers, who tend to be more risk-averse and less comfortable with long-term commitments.
“The best way for me to put somebody into a new Audi is if I sell them a quality pre-owned Audi first,” Arizmendi said.
To realize this philosophy, Rusnak Audi is embracing new technologies to facilitate transactions, including using Fair to bring in touchless, fully funded pre-owned deals for digital customers who prefer a more flexible solution to an auto loan.
“How dealerships make money now is through our service department and our parts department,” Arizmendi said. “So when we help get someone into a Fair car, we know we’ll see them back in again.”
Arizmendi said his dealership’s embrace of technology is pervasive, noting that it’s not unusual to pre-empt the day’s typical activities to train the dealership’s teams on new technologies featured in the sales process and the cars themselves.
Arizmendi said it all contributes to staying ahead of an increasingly fast-changing industry — which he considers the most important element for success for today’s dealers.
“You know, it’s written right in front of you and you have to adapt to that,” Arizmendi said. “You can’t go into this kicking and screaming, you’ve just got to say, ‘Okay, this is what we’ll focus on moving forward.’”
