In this episode of Driving Impact, Matt Maher sits down with Jessica Stafford to discuss what today’s car buyers value most and how dealers can evolve alongside changing expectations. From digital retailing and automotive financing to AI’s growing role in automotive retail, they share insights from Cox Automotive research and real-world dealership examples. The conversation explores practical ways to streamline the car-buying experience, connect online and in-store interactions, reduce deal times, and build customer trust. Whether you’re focused on improving customer experience, increasing dealership profitability, or strengthening customer loyalty, you’ll find ideas you can put into practice. Episode Transcript Introduction JESS: If your average deal time is still taking three, four hours, you’re creating too much friction in the process. Create the very best customer experience. If you kind of stay true to that as your North Star on how you’re operating your dealership, you’ll end up in this place where you really can connect all the tools. All of those points of technology are now enabling us to create this seamless, frictionless experience for customers. And that’s what they’re looking for, because that’s how they shop for everything these days. MATT: Welcome back to Driving Impact. I’m Matt Maher, founder of M7 Innovations, and today I’m joined by someone I had the pleasure of intellectually sparring with on stage at NADA 2026 back in February. We covered a lot of ground that day on AI, on dealers, on what’s actually working, what isn’t, and a lot has happened since then, and there’s even more to dig into. So, Jess Stafford, welcome to the show. How are you, Jess? JESS: I’m so good, and I am so happy to be here today and to get to talk to you. I mean, you. It really is insane how much has changed