1 Generation to the next in a family business & Including customers in Charitable Events with Trish Perillo Inguagiato, Social Media

Carey Sperry:                     Hello and welcome to Carey Sperry, All Social Y'all podcast. I'm your host, Carey Sperry. On All Social Y'all, we discuss how to employ social to become truly customer-centric. We identify how social is a feel for business growth and we talk with some of the best and brightest business leaders, entrepreneurs and digital marketers. Our guests share inspiring stories and effective tactics to discover, interact, and emotionally connect with customers where they are on social platforms.

Carey Sperry:                     In this episode with Trish Inguagiato of Perillo Motor Cars, she shares the story of the re-invigoration of the family business, social precedence and digital reputation. She explains how she approached the discovery of a misalignment of the in-store customer experience and the digital or the online customer experience.

Carey Sperry:                     She approached us with the owner, who's her father, Joe Perillo, in Chicago. She goes over four customer touch points she focused on and where she made measurable improvements. She talks about how she led the strategy, but she didn't do it alone. What's really inspiring is her story about integrating charitable events into the face-to-face and social digital customer experience.

Carey Sperry:                     She shares how one of the Perillo brands first events of this kind was built around the community and the cause. It was built around the product brand or automobile brand that they sell and built around their customer, caring together about something important and allowing for customers who could not attend the live event to participate remotely through social media. This was so successful and enjoyed by so many in a multitude of ways, that they have continued to be open minded and creative with meaningful events with their customers year after year.

Carey Sperry:                     Hi, everyone! In this episode with Trish Inguagiato of Perillo Dealer Group, we'll hear from her about a multi-generation family business and how perceptions from the differing generations can help revive pockets in the business, such as social media, one area that Trish saw that needed a big refresh and re-invigoration to align better to the superb customer experience that their customers knew and loved in the store, and the service center, on the phone, and on their website. She wanted all that to align. She saw that that was an area that should revive.

Carey Sperry:                     She also shares with us some amazing experiences and opportunities in their charitable events they shared on social, that contributed to customer engagement, and brand discovery, and even customer loyalty.

Carey Sperry:                     Allow me to introduce you to Trish Inguagiato. Trish and I met at the University of Wisconsin years ago. We became sorority sisters in Delta gamma and have been the closest of friends ever since, literally. We have worked and led philanthropic charitable events together in our sorority, is how we really started the whole ... Well, when we were children, we were exposed to that but as young adult through our sorority, it was one of the great ways that she and I bonded. This was all a long time ago, but it's part of our value system and we carry it into our businesses today.

Carey Sperry:                     Trish is from the amazing city of Chicago and grew up there with an entrepreneurial family. Her father, owner of Perillo Dealer Group since 1975. Her father has an amazing career and family story that Trish is going to share with us. She has a degree in journalism and took her career first to sales. Oh, she also has a degree in advertising, sorry, but also commercial real estate is her background in San Francisco, where she lives today with her husband and two teenage girls, in Menlo Park, California.

Carey Sperry:                     Since then, she's been involved in the family business using her love for writing and PR, but mostly sharing her passion to bring joy to as many customers as possible, while preserving and elevating a premier well-respected brand that her father and family built for the Chicago community and customers afar come to them.

Carey Sperry:                     Hello, Trish and thank you so much for being our featured guest!

Trish I. :                                Hi, Carey. Happy to be here! Thanks for having me.

Carey Sperry:                     Of course. Can you tell our listeners that don't know you a few words about yourself and your family business Perillo Dealer Group?

Trish I. :                                Sure. So really, the business started with my dad. The man is pretty incredible. He barely graduated high school, and got into the Army, and decided he wanted to sell cars. He eventually worked himself up to being the number one Cadillac salesman in the nation. People used to line up around the door just to come and see him, and so this is when he was really young. He was in his twenties, and his ultimate goal was he wanted to be a automobile dealer.

Trish I. :                                He saved up enough money. He had an opportunity to buy a dealership. It was a Pontiac dealership in a very obscure area in Chicago, and there are two previous dealers that failed before he went into that location, but he decided to take the shot. He did it. It was in 1975, the economy was pretty tough around '76 through '79 but he persevered. He did great. He actually did so well that when BMW was coming from Germany, they needed to open up some dealerships in the United States, and he applied for it, and he got it.

Trish I. :                                And so that's really put him on the map, is when he became a BMW dealer in 1981. He just continued to work really hard, and build his brand, and his customer loyalty. His employees, I mean his employees are amazing. They've been with us for over 40 years, a bunch of them.

Trish I. :                                And so he then had a great opportunity in 2009. The economy was really bad, as you remember in 2008, and a luxury dealer in downtown Chicago went bankrupt, and so he had an opportunity to buy Lamborghini, Bentley and Bugatti. And he did it, and it was a big jump. Took a leap of faith, but he did it, and he really became successful.

Trish I. :                                And so Rolls-Royce came to him because BMW owns Rolls-Royce. They said, "We'd like you to be a Rolls-Royce dealer in Chicago." And he took that on. He did really well. And then Maserati came to him and said, "We'd like you to be a dealer here." He did that. And then we recently became Alfa Romeo dealers.

Trish I. :                                He has quite a few luxury manufacturers under his belt. He's doing great. He's in his mid-seventies. He doesn't look like it, doesn't act like it. He gets up and goes to work single day, and just absolutely loves it, and he thrives. If you ask him, "Do you ever work?" He's like, "I've never worked a day in my life. That's how much I love it." To him, it's not work, it's just fun, so it's really exciting.

Trish I. :                                The way I was brought up was do what you love, follow your passion, follow your dreams, and you'll never work a day in your life. And so, it's great that I have such a great role model in my father, and my mother is just as hard working as my dad. She plays a role in the dealership also, but to a smaller scale. I come from a pretty good hardworking group of parents. I'm very fortunate.

Carey Sperry:                     For sure, but so humble at the time in giving, which we'll get into a little later in the conversation, around the charitable events and all that activity. But it's just so inspiring. Can you tell us how it happened, where you re-entered the family business? You were in commercial real estate and you had children. Can you kind of tell us about that process?

Trish I. :                                Yeah. As I mentioned, when I was younger, that's when my dad started the business. I was only six, but he used to bring us to the dealership on weekends, my brother and I, and I would work the phones, and I would do filing, and I would do all kinds of things to help. My brother would wash cars, and mop the floors, and do things.

Trish I. :                                What happened was my brother stayed in the business and I decided after college I wanted to make a name for myself, and I moved to California, and I got into sales and commercial real estate, so I separated from the business, just to build my own identity, which was great. And then I had a family, I took some time off, and I decided when my little daughter was in first grade that I was getting bored and I wanted to use my mind, but I didn't want to go into a full-time job situation.

Trish I. :                                I got on my parent's website, and I was like, "Oh my gosh. What's going on here? This isn't as professional. I know we could do so much better." And then I jumped on social media and I felt the same way. I was like, "Oh, no, this is not what we want. This is not who we are. I need to make this better." And then I jumped on our digital reputation site, and I saw there was only one star on Yelp, and I was just mortified Carey. I was like, "How can this be? I mean, our company is so great, and we're so successful, and the people that are getting on Yelp, they're just complaining and nobody is managing this. We've got so many great people, we just need to go ahead and have somebody really stay on top of this."

Trish I. :                                I called my parents right away and said, "Listen, I want to see if I could help you guys out. I have a background in advertising and marketing and I'd like to help you out with a couple things." And they said, "Sure, go for it." They really didn't specialize in this. They were focused more on the automobile selling side of things and the service side. And I said, "I can help you."

Trish I. :                                Really what I did is I gathered a team, and we just said, "Okay, our five goals is number one, we need to work on making our website a little bit more professional, a little bit easier to use, user friendly, and more call to action." That's what we really felt like we were missing. And so we worked on our website and our mobile app, and we streamlined it.

Carey Sperry:                     Wow.

Trish I. :                                Carey, it was almost overnight when we did that, we started to see more leads come through, and so it was really, really exciting. Yeah.

Trish I. :                                And so then the next step was social media was huge at the time. When we started seven years ago, it was really starting to take on. I was like, "Gosh, we really need to get our customers more evolved, and we need to show how great our cars are, and what our dealership looks like, and spotlight some of our employees." We really went out to Facebook and Instagram, and we really got our social media cranking. That turned out to be great.

Trish I. :                                And then my big role was the turning around digital reputation because, as I told you, we were at one star and I was like, "We can't do this anymore, you guys." We got together with our team of managers and salespeople and said, "Our customers are so happy and they do love us. Why don't you ask them after the sale or after they have a good service experience to get on Yelp, get on Google and tell them how great we've done?"

Trish I. :                                And we've done that. And if you go to Google review right now, we have four stars. I'm happy to say that over the years, we've done a really good job of asking people to go out there and tell them exactly how their Perillo experience was, and they've done it. And so it's just been amazing.

Trish I. :                                And the good thing too is I manage that, so the minute somebody goes out and they leave us a review, I immediately get back to them, and I thank them for the review, and I thank them for their loyalty, and I just want to let them know that we're so happy that they're our customer, and we look forward to serving them in the future. And so I think people like that, that ownership is really involved, and that they care.

Trish I. :                                And the same if it's a negative review. If it's a negative review, we want to know what we did wrong, and how we can help them, and how we could make other customers, how we could service other customers better because we're always learning from mistakes.

Trish I. :                                It's been a good process all the way through. Positive and negative, we've elevated our reputation, and that's really the most important thing, and we're helping our customers at the same time.

Trish I. :                                And then the last goal for me, was to have more events at the dealership. For us, when it comes to selling cars, the most important thing is to get somebody behind the wheel because once they get behind the wheel and they drive one of our cars, they really love it. They love the experience. And so what we did is we put together more events, where we had people test drive, and we got more people engaged.

Trish I. :                                And so, those were really the things I came in and I did. And honestly, Carey, it's just been a game-changer. It really has.

Carey Sperry:                     That's awesome.

Trish I. :                                Yeah! Our brand has just elevated to the next level, which is great.

Carey Sperry:                     That is so great! And it sounds like your dad was really open immediately to you coming in and appreciated your early discoveries, from just doing a little bit of looking around closely and putting yourself in the customer's shoes.

Carey Sperry:                     To recap everybody, one thing I want to say before I go through these four points that you just highlighted, is that the customers now don't care where they are when they're interacting with your brand. And what I mean by that is when they don't even consciously think anymore, we don't as consumers, about where we are actually interacting with the brand. If we're on our computer, and we go to a website, or we're on our mobile device, go to a website, or when we're on our mobile device and we go to an app; all we want is for it to be easy and to decrease the friction.

Carey Sperry:                     So like Trish said, that they worked on their app, they worked on their website experience. You really have to have all of that down. You have to have all of that behaving and actually be putting yourself in the customer's shoes. That's exactly what Trish did. She looked at the website, made it more professional, had a call to action, looked at the mobile app, and made sure that there was consistency through.

Carey Sperry:                     Another word for all of this everybody is called omni-channel. It's multiple digital touchpoints throughout the customer journey. The customers, no matter what stage they're in, there's a whole customer journey of discovery, exploration, consideration, and there's different names for these different stages, but really interacting with the customer through every single stage, no matter where they are. Maybe they've purchased cars from a Perillo dealership before and they're looking at purchasing another one, or they have a need to buy one for a child and they're a loyal customer. You have to serve them while thinking through the various digital touchpoints too.

Carey Sperry:                     Besides the website and the mobile app, then she looked at the social media and wanting to get customers more involved in more engagement.

Carey Sperry:                     And then three, the digital reputation is huge. A lot of customers don't really pay attention to that. There's a lot of negativity of understanding about what Yelp really is. Some people think Yelp is just a joke and they went through all these lawsuits and all this stuff. But there's other places where there's Yelp still, but there's other places too like Trish mentioned, Google reviews, so there's other places. People put comments, even on Facebook ads! They'll put comments on and they might say, "Oh you are the worst." Or, "I wouldn't go there if I were you." You've got to respond to those.

Carey Sperry:                     And then last is the events, and the dealership getting customers involved through that, which we'll get into in a little more detail in a second here. But I want to back up Trish, when you really started digging into this, and you said you pulled together a team. What did that team look like, the social media, communication, PR type of roles and how have they unfolded since you've been helping with the strategy and steps?

Trish I. :                                Yeah, no, we pulled together our managers. We put together a team of digital marketing experts. I knew a little bit, but I wasn't an expert, that's for sure. And so, we'd pulled in just a good group of people that understood the digital marketing world.

Trish I. :                                And really for me, Carey, I mean you were asking how I came in and what I did. It's not that I was so great but what I was, was a fresh set of eyes. And sometimes when you're in the zone, like my dad, and his managers, and his salespeople, when you just keep doing things the way that you've always done it and your philosophy is if it ain't broke, why fix it? Sometimes that is a problem. In fact, most times it is a problem. And I just came in from the outside as a consumer and somebody that really cared. Obviously, I'm very invested in my parent's company and I care about them so deeply, that I came in with a fresh set of eyes and said, "Okay, I'm coming and looking at it as a customer and how would I want this experience?"

Trish I. :                                And when I presented it to our team, they were like, "This makes sense. This really makes sense. We've got to elevate our game. We've got to make it easier. We got to make it better because if we don't, we're going to lose our competition." That's really what happened. We were so fortunate that at first people didn't buy into it, but then when they started to see the progress we were making, and how we were elevating our brand, and how we were getting more customers, and people were coming and saying so many great things about us, everybody bought into it. That was the most important thing, is that we changed everybody's attitude. Everybody said, "We're ready for this."

Carey Sperry:                     They listened to you, that that's huge.

Trish I. :                                They did.

Carey Sperry:                     And so-

Trish I. :                                They did. I was lucky

Carey Sperry:                     The risks of leaving it, if it kept going the way it was before you made the discoveries, I think of it built up over time, where you might not notice something this year but then if you let it go the next year and the next year, even quarter by quarter, it's snowball effect. It seems like they realized, "Okay, we can't keep just doing the way we're doing it." Is that how the attitudes were?

Trish I. :                                Yes, that's exactly what it was. And nobody really made a conscious effort into thinking that way. It was just they were on automatic mode. And so because I came in, I'm like, "We got to think out of the box. We have to be creative. We've got to come up with different things that nobody else is doing. That's what's going to set us apart." And first they were resistant but then they bought into it. It all worked out and it still does today. I mean, we're always coming up with new ideas, and new fun ways to do things, and elevate our brand.

Carey Sperry:                     And it's not just you or one person. It's a team effort with key people have an interest and ability, to some extent, to contribute to the whole journey, and the whole content creation, and engagement, and everything, right?

Trish I. :                                Everything. It's a team. It takes a village.

Carey Sperry:                     It does.

Trish I. :                                It does but you know what? It does, but you're better as a team. I mean, I always say it, there's no I in team.

Carey Sperry:                     Yeah. And if people don't have someone that is like you, that can have that perspective inside the company, just owners take a look at the different digital touchpoints and the social media presence, and just start writing things down, and reach out for help.

Carey Sperry:                     Do you think it's made the brand even more continuous across all parts of the customer journey with the Perillo dealerships? Because I know I've been in those stores and it's just an amazing, positive, energetic thing. I mean, even in the service center. You wouldn't think that an automobile service center ... You kind of think of you smell oil, or rubber tires, and you drink some bad coffee. But it's not that way at all, it's a really great experience. Have you been able to reflect that continuously digitally?

Trish I. :                                Yes, we have. And so we've been really fortunate. If you go to joeperillo.com, it's all of our Perillo brands. And so I think that in the last couple of years, our focus is to really elevate our name and our brand. People have known that Perillo has been around for over 40 years. It's been 44 since my dad started the company, so people know it's a family owned business. They know that their employees are extremely loyal, they know that the company is trustworthy, has integrity, and they follow through on their promises. And so I do believe in my heart that when people think of the Perillo brand, they relate it to luxurious automobiles. And so that's what we really were striving for is the Perillo name is synonymous with luxury cars in Chicago. And I think we've achieved it. I really do. People know us and they feel very comfortable.

Trish I. :                                We hope to just keep moving. We're not going to be satisfied with the status quo. We're going to just keep on elevating our game.

Carey Sperry:                     You're helping more and more people, and people come from outside the Chicago area to interact with that experience that way because a lot of people don't like buying cars. They find it grueling but when you have a good experience when you buy a car, no matter whether it's luxurious or it's just a beginner car for your teenager or something, you want it to be positive.

Trish I. :                                Yes. Yes.

Carey Sperry:                     And you want to feel like you're ... It's a big decision, so I think you guys do such a great job at that.

Trish I. :                                Oh, thank you.

Carey Sperry:                     With helping the community, and having events, and using social to bring in more awareness and collaboration with that, is just awesome to see how you guys have been so generous helping the community and how you've shared that with your customers. When you re-entered the business, how did you get involved in charitable events or just events in general and how have you weaved it into the communications and engagement with your customers?

Trish I. :                                That's a good question. What happened was when I re-entered, I thought, "We're having all these events and we're getting people to come in from the community." My parents have always been extremely charitable, but they've always donated anonymously. They just never wanted to put their name in the spotlight. They've always given back to the community, the causes they've really cared about. And so I approached them and just said, "Listen, this is an opportunity. You could still give. Okay? It's coming from your heart. It's coming from a good place, but why don't you make it known, and why don't we introduce a charity that's near and dear to your heart when we do our events?"

Trish I. :                                And so I got them on board, and they said, "Okay, we could do that." So not only do we pay the money to sponsor certain events, but then we try to raise money for the organization.

Trish I. :                                Just one example, about five years ago, Bentley wanted to target more women customers. Their key demographic, I mean most of the people that buy Bentley's are male. And so they came to me and they said, "Listen, we really need to hone in on the women out there. There are plenty of successful women that could purchase Bentley's, and we'd love to market to them."

Carey Sperry:                     Well, yeah.

Trish I. :                                Yeah! Oh, definitely. And so they're expensive cars, but you know what? There are a lot of great women out there that could do it. And so they said, "What do you think about holding an all women's event? Bentley just came out with all different kinds of really cool purses, all different colors, a very expensive purse but very elegant and beautiful. What do you think about having some sort of party?" I thought, "Wow! This is great."

Trish I. :                                We had a big fashion show, and we had women from the city of Chicago, we pulled them in from the suburbs. We probably had about 350 women attend the event, and we matched the purses with the cars, and it was really successful. Before we did this I thought, "What would be the perfect charity and what is something near and dear to our heart?" And so I did know somebody that started a nonprofit to help women that have been victims of domestic violence. And so we brought them in, and they were a speaker. They were just phenomenal. They were really, really moving. I mean everybody in the crowd, we were all crying.

Trish I. :                                We raised a ton of money for that organization, we brought awareness, and we also got people to come in, and come to an event, and have a great time, see the purses, test the cars out. It was just spectacular all the way around.

Carey Sperry:                     Wow.

Trish I. :                                I mean I felt so blessed and honored that we could give that kind of opportunity and that we could be a part of it.

Trish I. :                                Yeah, from that point on, Carey, after that one, every single event that we do, whether it's the Children's Hospital of Chicago or just we've helped out kids at the St. Jude's hospital. I mean we've helped out several organizations and it's just been really rewarding, super rewarding. We just feel lucky and blessed that we're able to do this for people and give back to the community. The community has been great to us, and now we need to give back to them.

Carey Sperry:                     Yes. Thank you so much for sharing that. That is just amazing. And I know some people say, "I don't want to make people think that I'm trying myself some big hero because we're contributing to charity, or to the needy," whatever that arena is in their community. But it's not that. Sharing it with more people and supporting the cause, while it's something that you're able to do because you have a business, and then bringing your customers to be able to celebrate in that thinking. We see that a lot with the big brands of Nike, and Nordstrom, and all kinds of big brands out there doing it. They're banding together with their customers, who they know their customers are through data, and then celebrating in those beliefs and in those causes. It doesn't have to be weaved in and out of the brand as extreme as some big brands do it, but just having it as another way to interact with your customer and bring them some joy, along with serving the community.

Carey Sperry:                     Thank you, Trish, so much. We've run out of time but this was just amazing, and very inspiring, and such a wonderful story. I really appreciate you sharing it with us so much.

Trish I. :                                Oh, you're welcome, Carey. It's been a pleasure to be on your podcast. Thanks for asking me to join you.

Carey Sperry:                     Of course. Anytime. All right, everybody, thank you. We'll talk with you next time.

Carey Sperry:                     Thanks for listening to the All Social Y'all podcast. For free resources and materials, head over to all socialyall.com. That's allsocialyall.com. Also, we'd love to hear from you. What subject areas would you like to hear about in future episodes? You can share that with us by dropping me a comment on our website or in Instagram at All Social Y'all.