NADA becomes a showcase each year for product developers and vendors to show their wares.
This year companies as diverse as Polly, an agency providing an embedded auto insurance platform for dealers and RockED, a dealership training platform, are just a couple of companies pitching their products as different ways for dealers to boost sales and profits. Mike Burgiss is chief marketing officer of Polly, which announced the launch of its new Professional Insurance Platform to empower dealerships to monetize the insurance process and improve gross profits. The announcement comes as the 2025 NADA Show opens this week in New Orleans.
Burgiss explained why Polly’s platform and business proposition is unique. “This is the first built from the ground up for car dealers,” he said. “Car dealers today think about car insurance as an administrative step, a necessary check mark on getting the deal done. “What Polly offer is a chance to turn insurance into a profit center – a new profit center for the dealer.”
Polly offers choice in the way that a dealership offering cars of every make, model and trimline can offer customers. “You’re going to get quotes for more than 98% of your customers no matter what their driving history is,” Burgiss said. “By having offers or every customer, the dealer has more opportunity to profit with insurance.” Through the program, dealers introduce their customers to Polly – which is an insurance agency licensed to work in all 50 states. “Because of that introduction, if that customers becomes what we call a qualified lead – if they make it through certain steps of the – then the dealer gets plaid a flat fee,” Burgiss said, The fee depends on a dealer’s state and whether it’s a direct offer from Progressive or whether it’s from the agency. “That can add up to several thousand dollars a month for an average size dealership,” Burgiss said.
Customers are getting the same products at the dealership that they would if they called the insurance company directly. On top of that, dealers who offer that insurance – whether the customer buys it or not – see a higher F&I gross profit, he said. Burgiss said Polly has done a lot of study on this, collecting data on over one million car deals, and it shows dealers see an increase of 18% F&I gross profit ($354) when the customers receive insurance quotes. What happens is that the customer sees savings through Polly and other aspects of the car dealer and that savings is “found money,” Burgiss said.
When they find out they can save money, it primes the pump for a conversation that leads to more ‘yes’ responses in the F&I, he said. A recent study from Polly shows that most customers shop for their insurance during and after a car purchase – not before.
Polly’s 2025 consumer study found that 56% of respondents would purchase additional F&I products if they saved $75 or more per month on insurance, underscoring the important role insurance can play in helping dealerships close more deals while maximizing revenue. Polly’s program also offers insurance quotes anytime, even after normal business hours and Sundays, as well as a dedicated performance manager to integrate the Polly platform into existing dealership processes and drive profitability.
It includes real-time performance analytics to inform data-driven decisions and optimize dealership operations. Since dealers can’t sell insurance, this option offers dealers product to provide and an opportunity for profit. “Our cutting-edge technology and unparalleled carrier partnerships ensure that dealerships can unlock new revenue streams while enhancing the car-buying experience for their customers,” said Rick Gibbs, chief executive officer at Polly. Matthias Stoever is the co-founder and CEO of RockED, a cutting-edge mobile learning and sales enablement platform tailored for the automotive industry. Stoever said he and his partners started the company about four years ago. His background is in software product development, spending several years with Sixt, a German rental car company. Co-founder Marco Schnabl was also a co-founder of automotiveMastermind.
The first training program RockED started with a basic program for onboarding sales people; how to take phone calls, how to do a proper walk-around, how a should a good delivery look, etc. From that initial program, RockED has expanded to cover a gamut of training needs in a typical dealership. “I think right now, we cover almost every role in the dealership,” Stoever said. “We have courses for F&I, for service advisors and we’re starting with technician curriculums right now. And of course, a lot of sales training. “We really want to make sure that we have content and certification programs for every dealership.”
The programs are focused on franchise dealerships, but RockEd also offer lessons for used-car departments and also has a few independents on the platform, Stoever said. “What we’ve found is that the traditional way of training isn’t working,” he said, “You can do an in-person training, but it’s very costly and you might do it once a quarter or once a month, and maybe someone has the day off that day. It’s just not consistent.”
Stoever said even webinars and traditional online learning don’t work because employees just click through it. “When we started, we tried to think of how we learn?” he said. In some cases, it’s a YouTube video for DIY or recipes from Instagram or language through a phone app. So, Stoever and his team doubled down on that idea, creating an app to download on a phone. “This is a lot of short form video content, 60 to 90 second videos, that explain skills and show how to do the things (for that role),” he said. “It’s a gamified experience, like Peloton, Duolingo a language learning app. You collect your badges, streaks, points and leaderboards to make it a sticky experience.
“There are entire curriculums and courses on specific topics,” Stoever said. “It’s meant to be a casual five to 10 minute experience. But doing that every day for a week is an hour, and every week a month and that’s five hours a month – a full week of training” Throughout the year, that is consistent training that moves you through a lot of material. “For example, right now I’m taking a used car course,” he said. “It’d probably going to take a total of 90 minutes. I want to work through that course throughout the month and use it to get a better understanding about how a used car department works.”
This is how courses answering phone calls, negotiations, how to sell tires or do a multi-point inspection or handing an upset customer through de-escalation. On the used car side, there is a lesson on how to understand the difference between a new-car and used-car customer or how to develop a used car client, how to sell certified or how a Toyota dealership can sell a used Mercedes, when you don’t have the same product knowledge.
Dealers can determine a plan, which areas to work on in a certain month. RockED and its reps will be at NADA to show how dealers can get the RockED platform through a monthly subscription for about $800 which includes hundreds of courses and thousands of hours of content on their phone, Stoever said. The company focuses on having credible relatable people in font of camera providing the training whether it be longtime dealers, dealer trainer and even a former FBI hostage negotiator, he said.
One of the big interests for RockED customers now is any content on customer service; that seems to be the most popular currently, Stoever said.
Article originally published on Used Car News
Author: Jeffrey Bellant