Masterminds on the Move: Raising the Bar on Salesperson Effectiveness at the Digital Marketing Strategies Conference

Author: Jen Sanford, VP of Marketing and Enablement

This year, the team at Pasch Group raised the bar with their Digital Marketing Strategies Conference (DMSC).

Held every spring, DMSC is a curated event for automotive dealers serious about improving their sales and marketing effectiveness. automotiveMastermind was proud to be a Gold Sponsor at this year’s festivities in Scottsdale. I am pleased to have the opportunity to join fellow Masterminds Wendy Engelhardt and Bill Egan for two and a half days of intense learning and camaraderie.

Customized Sessions: AI, Data and Evolutionary Tech Solutions for Dealers

This year, DMSC featured  a series of customized sessions focused on customer data, digital marketing, website management and telephone-based comms – with artificial intelligence (AI) injected into every conversation.

Keynote speakers at DMSC 2025 addressed both challenges in the marketplace as well as evolutionary technology solutions that have risen to meet these challenges. Meanwhile, the panels provided frank conversations between dealers and vendors about the value they’ve seen launching and leveraging these kinds of technologies.

Navigating AI and Customer Data Platforms (CDP)

The main topic on everyone’s lips was CDP (customer data platforms). Vendors are jockeying to offer a variety of AI-enabled CDP solutions to dealerships and dealer groups.

Each vendor has a different take on AI implementation. As a result, it is difficult for dealers to find the option that works for them. Their existing tech stacks, filled with legacy software, sometimes impair their ability to define the problem they want to solve as well as find the right solution for it.

Activating Dealership Customer Data

Where does that leave Customer Data, the fuel for all of the other communication channels?

Bill Egan was on hand to answer questions on Tuesday’s panel, “Supporting & Activating New Revenue Streams.” The session explored the powerful opportunity dealers have to drive revenue through smarter data activation and turn raw data into actionable insights.

Our industry is awash with data about every aspect of consumers’ lives and behaviors. The challenge has been how to access and deploy it in a meaningful way, knowing that traditional automotive CRM data is often inaccurate.

The good news is that today, data management is much easier to manage with platforms such as automotiveMastermind that can cleanse first-party data, enrich with accurate third-party data, and provide recommendations about how to use this data in real life. The underlying information is only useful if it is 1) accurate, and 2) organized in a way that makes it useful.

On a final note, this event was unusual in another way. Often, conference goers leave early, with only a few ardent attendees (and vendors) onsite at the final presentation. That wasn’t the case this year. The combination of a terrific final day agenda and fun afternoon activities kept people onsite.

Kudos to PCG. I’ll be back, as will my fellow Masterminds.