Breaud on Fixed Velocity, Podium on Customer Conv., Downing on Digital Strategy

This episode of Daily Dealer Live covers three pressure points in automotive: fixed-ops execution, AI that actually converts, and the realities of selling EVs on the ground. Kate Downing, COO of Williams Auto Group, breaks down digital lead generation and her dealership's move to a combined Tekion DMS/CRM platform. Podium's Jiovan Melendez, Sr. Director of Product, and Liam Golightley, VP of Customer Success, join to unpack OpenAI's case study on Podium's Jerry AI agent and how dealers coach Jerry in natural language. Lawrence Breaud, dealer principal at Autos of Forney, closes the show with a look at running a brand-new VinFast rooftop alongside a high-volume used-car buying operation.

Throughout, the conversation keeps returning to fragmentation: too many disconnected systems, too many channels, and too little context carried between them. Podium's pitch is that Jerry, a fully trained and coachable AI team member, solves that by owning the communications layer across text, call, and web, then writing the results back into the DMS and CRM dealers already run on.

Key takeaways

• Podium says a third of dealers are now on its platform, and OpenAI featured Podium in a case study alongside brands like Disney, T-Mobile, and Instacart.

• Jerry's "trainer agent" lets a GM retrain the AI in natural language in about a minute, versus legacy AI retraining that can take weeks.

• Kate Downing says Williams Auto Group is moving its two rooftops to Tekion's combined DMS/CRM ARC platform on March 17, after years on Cox Automotive's Dealertrack, Dealer.com, X-Time, and VinSolutions.